Staistically, no we're not seeing a 'substantial' increase'. In fact, ICAO's accident and fatality trend is distcinctly down on pre-COVID levels.

I reckon it’s because nobody is listening to their managers harp on about fuel savings anymore and just adds whatever they want.

More cancellations to save CNY.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...nd-of-february

Just think how much profit we would be making if we actually had pilots to fly all those extra flights?

Is it lack of pilots ? Is it cabin crew ? Or is it both ?
Or maybe we have enough pilots but in the wrong places !
Or maybe they recalled people too late to save a penny ! Who knows ?!
Now at times where you would expect to make money we cancel !
Once again no heads rolling down the stairs from upper floors.

nothing will happen to upper management, two left without any care in the world believing they made the right decision, while the DFO is scrambling to sell a handbook to the masses.

the board is very negative towards a cost increase in front line operations, they WILL NOT APPROVE any substantial increase.

This leaves lower ranks pedalling a sub-standard contract that will only attract sub standard candidates.

soon they will take ALL the pilots applying to CX. good news for a lot of ppl. congrats ......

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...tensive-flight

Wow, did senior management not advise the government board appointees that closing the bases would be short-sighted? I'm not laughing.... really.

There so much to unpack here, but what I foresee is, as the government is cracking down on the company, the company will further crack down on front line staff. Happened during covid, will happen again now.

I will not be surprised if I get an email tomorrow announcing the new sickness management policy. Which no doubt will have the screws further tightened.

Instead you received an email from Head of Flying Training wondering why online courses aren’t being completed, when it was the HFT himself who removed the duty times from your rosters which had allowed these courses to be completed within the AFTL limits.

At a time when the company publicly acknowledges crew are hitting flight and duty time limits, thereby making it more difficult to legally complete online courses, the company simultaneously removes the excess hours added to the RT, making it more difficult still.

Does he actually wonder why these courses aren’t being done, or are these emails a smokescreen and distraction to show the adults in the room he’s proactively doing something, when in reality it’s his actions that have contributed to the undesirable outcome.
i am assuming the HFT isn’t so clueless as to not understand the additional hours on the RT was not an RP issue, but an AFTL mitigation to ensure crew were legal to fly their published roster.

Since when were these hours ever counted for AFTLs? It was only ever a duty time limit, and it was interfering with the rostering of minimum rest. Sims aren't counted for the 900 limit.

Perfect time to be arranging some coordinated action. Pity the union is weaker than my granny carrying her shopping.

I hope plenty of people catch COVID or become stressed in the next 2 months.

Quote:

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Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific to set up task force over extensive flight cancellations, as airline apologises and says worst passed for latest cuts

---

This is truly priceless, a taskforce to identify why they have no pilots.

Looking forward to all the reasons apart from contract terms, as that's not what a taskforce is about. It will have to have a major technical reason that can justify a task force.

What a muppet show....

I wonder if being a lifestyle brand has gotten in the way of being an airline? The beauty of having quietly quit is that I couldn't care less either way.

Since the day the additional hours were added to the RT sessions. Both sims and regulatory online courses count towards cumulative duty time. How is your duty time spent doing online courses now calculated by the company?

An issue anyone on the line saw coming 12 months ago yet it requires a special taskforce to figure out. How on earth are these managers still in jobs, let alone making still making decisions about how to fix the problem going forward.
Truly laughable, all of it.

None of us believed they would do it because for sure this would be the result. They can't be that stupid, can they? When they did it it was a shocking surprise. They cut their own throat, and proudly displayed the bloody knife.

Not just cathay but hk in general was so hateful towards expats making good money. They were openly saying let them go, we don't need these expats.
Now they're f'ed because so many expats left.

What made them think if they took away what had to be done for decades to get qualified expats to hk to do jobs hk itself didn't have enough qualified people for, they would still stay or be attracted to keep coming?

Half empty high rises and half staffed airlines.
More brand new high rises and new airplanes they have coming online soon will be making this even worse. The worst has yet to come.

hk government now demanding to know what the f caused this is hilariously comical. They should have protected themselves from unscrupulous employers such as cathay by having laws and regulations preventing what cathay did to its employees with impunity, at least in short term. Long term result is here and it's damaging cathay AND hk and they still don't want to admit to the glaring mistake that caused all this. They can't even take the first step to fix this sh!t show by admitting their mistake, their miscalculation. Therefore it won't get fixed yet.

it's going to get worse for cathay and hk and it's well deserved. It's amusing to watch.

The duty time is counted for the cumulative duty hour limits; 55 in 7, 95 in 14, and 190 in 28.
These sim and online course hours do not apply to the 28-day 100-hour, and 12-month 900-hour limits which are solely defined by flight time.

Correct.

So I ask again, how does the company now calculate your duty time doing online regulatory courses now they’ve removed the long standing practice of adding additional duty hours to your RT sessions?

While the old practice wasn’t perfect, it was something that had kept the company, the HKAOA and the CAD satisfied.

https://gbcode.rthk.hk/TuniS/news.rt...6-20240110.htm

Cathay Pacific admitted on Wednesday that it had underestimated the number of pilots it needed in reserve to maintain its normal operations, leading to recent flight cancellations.

In a statement, the airline's chief operations and service delivery officer, Alex McGowan, regretted having to cancel flights at short notice, and acknowledged that it was failing to live up to the standard expected by customers.

“I would like to extend a sincere apology to our customers affected by recent travel disruptions. Over the Christmas and New Year period, we underestimated the number of reserve pilots we would need,” he said.

“Given our January pilot rosters were already set in mid-December, the lack of adequate reserve levels persisted into January. In order to stabilise the current operation, we needed to cancel further flights across the first two weeks of January.”

The airline said it has contacted affected passengers to offer alternative travel arrangements, usually within 24 hours of their original departure time.

Cathay said it has also cancelled additional flights on non-peak days until the end of February to ensure that all customers booked to fly during the peak Lunar New Year period between February 7 and 18 can travel as planned.

On average, 12 flights are cancelled each day. The peak was on January 7 when 27 flights were cancelled.

The airline assures that the number of cancellations will decrease in the coming weeks.

McGowan said he would lead a task force to identify and address the underlying issues to improve the airline's services.

Don't forget that in the last survey, "intention to stay" was at 48%, which the DFO saw as a positive point.
​​​​​​Nevermind that 52% are actively looking at other jobs.

Even a 30% pay raise wouldn't stop most from leaving, knowing well how the company can cut their contracts at will.

The problem is not a recruitment issue, it is a retention issue.

Give us our old contract (like any other airline in the world did) and maybe we'll talk.

How come other HK base airlines with lower pay scale have no shortage of pilots but CX being highest paid have this issue ? I wonder what so special of them ?

The only way the board will agree to a 30% pay rise is if the MPP was raised to 84 hours a month. So bye bye Productivity pay!

48% have intentions to stay, I would say 50% of them are new or recent joiners are too old to move on, married to a local and/or pure incompetent in operations, the remaining 50% are locals.

for the other 52% they want to leave but too scared to test the waters.

Dear cygnet78,

I flew Cathay for 30 years. For three decades, I had a front row seat to a never ending stream of cost reduction measures that manifested themselves in two ways: constant cuts to pay and benefits, along with constant reductions to the standards of hiring and the training of pilots.

Pilot pay and benefits were constantly on the chopping block. It became a pattern of abuse. Every few years new contracts would be imposed in a sign or be fired campaign of intimidation. Inevitably, as the lower pay packages attracted fewer and fewer experienced pilots, recruitment quality standards were reduced. Bizarrely, managers boasted that the reduced standards still attracted top pilot talent….and so the cuts continued.

As well as the pay cuts, cost efficiencies were imposed on what used to be minimum training requirements, such as minimum crew experience levels and minimum crewing levels on long range and ultra long range flights. It was alarming to witness the constantly diminishing standard of pilot experience on the flight deck. Warnings to management were shrugged off.

Pilot’s flying rosters were also on the block and began to reflect an abusive interpretation of the required flight time limitations. By international convention, maximum flight time limitations are meant to be exercised only in the short term to deal with extreme and unforeseen circumstances (typhoon). Yet, in an effort to scrimp and save money, Cathay management began to roster pilots to the legal limit on a permanent basis. Every assigned flight pattern was stretched to the absolute legal limit. Rest patterns rostered between flights became the absolute bare minimum allowed by law. The outcome should have been predictable, unsustainable levels of pilot fatigue and burn out was the result.

Multiple warning letters from Senior Training Captains to management about these and other cost cutting safety concerns were ignored. The risks associated with diminishing safety standards were rubber stamped as acceptable safety risks by internal management review. All the while management would crow, without shame, that safety was their top priority (Orwellian).

The never ending spiral of cost cutting and poisonous intimidation succeeded in reducing what was once the best pilot job in the world…to a kafkaesque life of toxic intimidation, malaise and fatigue.

So after 30 years I had enough. I gave three months notice, packed up my family and left. A clerk oversaw my release and walked me to the door.

Cathay is indeed reaping what it has sowed.

The toxicity was there from when I joined in late 2011. During COVID it got worse, coupled with company and government requirements it took its toll.

During the covid era I had 3 line checks, one with a “hard-a**”. At that point I didn’t care if I passed or failed or got sacked. I had enough with the company, the constant PCR/RAT testing, the quarantine down-route and back in HK and the endless forms. This carried on till I went for my command.

Even now as a commander, I’m unmotivated and couldn’t care less if we took more fuel, I met OTP or not ,,,,,,,

This has been happening for all airlines in the world especially in the middle east since 15 years ago. What makes CX special ?

Absolutely, but this is a HK forum. More specifically, even EK gave crews back their old terms & conditions after Covid19.

CX, not even close.

21 yrs for me Raven.
Did a stint on the JRC to try and change that mindset which turned out to be an absolute waste of my time.
When my offboarding process was complete I was told by a pimple faced clerk to “enjoy the rest of my life”
Whilst initially insulted by the flippancy of the comment I have since come to realise that maybe she knew more than she was letting on !
Ditto to all you have stated.

Raven speaks with clarity and sadly its a clarity never picked up by managers, (small m intended). That the many managers are pilots themselves, is testament to where the greed of position and sycophantic promotion continues to prevail as a toxic wedge between the McGowan's of the world and the the cabal in Flight ops who show utter disrespect for those who shape the company..( small c intended). Cx breeds a certain type of hate and its a hate strangely unconnected to salary...and one not really evident in HKE or HKA..sad...

Does that regional shortage now include Hong Kong?

Who knows?
All will be answered by the task force, made up exclusively by the incompetents who masterminded this mess, while excluding those who had been warning for months of the looming fiasco such as the Chairman of the HKAOA. But it would go against the Swire management model to have anyone but Yes men in the room.

As for CX being special in comparison to the Middle East airlines, look at the facts.
CX management claim their pilot contracts are competitive. No individual gets to decide what’s competitive and what isn’t. The market does. There is a steady flow of experienced pilots out of CX to the ME/Europe/Australia/US/Canada. The flow of experienced pilots from those regions to CX is virtually non-existent.

That’s how competitive the CX conditions are.

The most recent pilot satisfaction survey concluded that 92% of all Cathay Pathetic Pilots w@nk and that the remaining 8% were lying. ;-)

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/articl...x-18654603.php

Funny. Very funny.

More here...

Humble pie, anyone?

Not really, they’re much worse results than similar hub airlines posted a year ago when CX was deep in the red.

This years figures will be eclipsing.

ps, how much of that will you see? Surely 8-10 months to be equivalent to what went round last year, considering the atrocious basic salary you’re on.

pps, just in time for the Chinese house of cards to crumble (according to more or less everyone but yourself).

That’s rather ironic coming from you on the very day senior management finally admitted they are unable to meet their expansion targets due to a shortage of crew.

That collapse is surely coming, any decade now……
Let's face it, the glory days are over - there’s always someone willing to do the job cheaper than you or I when we started out. how atrocious do you think the salary will be once single pilot / reduced pilot ops is the norm?

Oh no, a lack of crew? That is such terrible news!!

7 weeks, of your COS18 basic? Am I hearing that right?

Wow. I suppose they know if you haven’t left now, no amount of insult will push you further.

Yes I wish they would keep insulting me like this