New Exodus at Cebu Pacific
 

Can anyone confirm that there's a new exodus of pilots from Bupac to SeaAir( heard that they will have new A320 planes from Tiger Air and the VP is also a retired pilot from Bupac) Tsk...tsk..tsk...

hmmmmm.... i confirm that is TRUE!

i suspect the "exodus" is of a diff nature than what PAL experienced, in the sense that there is not exactly any hostility against 5J per se, just that the market is opening up with the new players being aggressively poaching. that said, i heard 5J just received their latest A320? 5J is still in a growth trajectory, unlike PAL. airphil, zest, and now seair of course will only be happy to get any "unhappy" pilots, of which im sure any airline will have no matter how generous the pay package is. :ok:

That's what you think. The truth is, there is a lot of hostility and animosity. That is the true reason for the exodus. The pilots are marching across the streets to the tune of Steely Dan's music.

hey 19 baby!

st ex, i know of no airline (or even no company) where there is no hostility and animosity. :p

Ow.... tsk..tsk..tsk...if that is the case, it's a slap in the face, losing your drivers not because they're going out of the country for a higher pay, but just in the other side of the fence... I guess it's Not a Pay probs...it's Managing probs... Hehehe, well....history repeat itself...look at who's at the top...Mark Breen.... he did it again !!!, :ugh::ugh: Ceb overtakes PAL, leaving the ranks grumbling like hell.......'wonder why the management pilots allowed this to happen :confused:?

I see..tsk..tsk..tsk..too bad for the ranks...5J is becoming Top Heavy... the Top gets the higher pay, below are working like camels....well, I can see it almost exploding...
If the pilots will go out, will 5J match the pay of he poachers? or will just hire Expats to fill in... Paying Expats is lesser than paying the increase of the present roster.:confused::confused:

yes, its true. there's a heavy exodus of Cebu Pacific A-320 pilots to other airlines. Just recently, 3 Captains left for Vietnam Airlines. This month of November, 8 Captains and 3 FO's have already submitted their resignation (effective Dec 1) to the VP Flight Ops to join the newest airline partnership in the country, Tiger Airways-Sea Air. and additional 6 more senior FO's are also resigning and are tranferring to Airphil Express for direct hire Captain upgrade. on top of this, an additional 20 sets of Captains/FO are slated to move to Tiger next year with the arrival of additional A319/320. More pilots are also interested to leave with the pending operations of Air Asia in the Philippines next April 2011.:D:D:D The reasons for leaving...................inhumane working conditions, pilots are being scheduled to their maximum utilization with back to back red-eye, 1 day off a week, 5 red eyes per month, . The management seems to be deaf and blind on the issues and complains of the line pilots. and the higher management has disregarded and put into trash bin the pilot retention plan presented by the pilot union to stop this exodus... Pilots are asking why they are still the lowest paid drivers in the Philippines despite the fact that Cebu Pac now is no.1 airline domestically / internationally and the only the earning airline in the country. The pilots from Zest, PAL, Airphil Express and Tiger are getting a sincerely higher take-home pay than their Cebu Pac counterpart with less flight sched and less stress. :\

thanks Winglet, now I see the clearer picture...wow...that's worst than I thought....but I still wonder what would 5J do to solve these things.... Heard that they still have 20+ A320s, pilots leaving....how can they solve that? where will they get their pilots? :confused::confused:
I can see that 5J's being number1 will be short-lived....tsk tsk..

spoke to Cebu recently regarding employment - emphasized the quoted requirements of Filipino citizen and 1500hours for the A320.

Can do the Filipino bit but not the experience - non starter for now. I'm sure if they opened some of their requirements up it could help matters. For instance recently in the UK, BA mainline and BA Cityflyer were recruiting (Experience requirement for mainline was 500hours and for Cityflyer was 0 - must stress chance of getting an interview with low-hours experience very small however... competing with Type-Rated experienced folk - Cityflyer was rumoured to have over 1000applications in the space of a month). Plenty of low-hours pilots coming off the conveyer belt at Clark if they should want I expect though.

Anyway by the sounds of it my time would be spent looking to the likes of Zest, Philexpress etc(as I have done already I might add).

Interesting stuff anyway people.

MB--wherever he goes, stuff happens
 

never heard about the pilot issues last time i had beer sessions with guys 3 or 4 months ago so i was pushed into checking stuff with friends and i am shocked that winglet777 is not joking. quite sad, really, as i was happy before that 5J was the "rebel" to PAL's bullying. but now that seems ages ago.

this MB guy is such a queer appointment. everywhere he's been he's created havoc -- airasia, sama, now 5J. and i heard he's bringing more expat managers instead of developing young pinoy managers. could be true, cebu is becoming top heavy with a few very high-earning managers and a lot of low-earning junior managers and staff.

if that's the case, well, there's always new "rebels" eager to knock them off their perch.

Management Cycle
 

This similar situation happened in the past. Pilots are the "frontliners & workforce" at a very low "bargain price", yet the easiest "sacrificial lambs" while the management people are getting their "fat checks" at their expense. The resultant effect is very DEVASTATING to the AIRLINE.

But I have seen management people like Captain F & Mr. G and Captain A & Mr. M, both pairs left CEBPAC unceremoniously. Is a Management Cycle in the offing?

I firmly believe that integrity is priceless, but now I seem to believe that integrity is worth the money value of a person.

Don't act like JUDAS!!!

chairwrecker, sad, but its a case of him bringing in his buddies with a disregard to learn or understand the company and culture of his clientbase. Doesn't matter if he destroys the company and walks away with pockets full of money!

Is it true????? 5j management is going nuts on how to solve the exodus....1.)With the announcement of additional Red Eye flights this Dec, pilots are expecting for the worse...expect Sick Leaves..and other alibis...working like hell, paid less...2) 8 Capt's and 8 senior FO's goin to AirPhil Express this Dec..., and more to come..... Capt were offered 6 Digits as sign-in bunos...plus plus plus, ..FOs received 5 digits but almost 6...and direct upgrade to Right Seat this Jan.......plus plus plus...who could refuse that....heard that 20+ drivers will be in the next batch.......3) Sea-Tiger will take off this December, first batch of pilots will start Orientation in Singapore this month....and 40+ are still in the line, waiting for the additional A320 to arrive this Jan...Too bad for 5J...they do not lose pilots but skills and experience... With the additional A320 comming for 5J, and with pilots going out, maybe it's time to build a Hangar, for the unmanned planes...

latest update from the kusina. http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ies/thumbs.gif

expect more pilots leaving the company by Dec and early nexy year. Sweet and tempting offers are being received by A-320 Capatins and F/O from the other airlines across and outside of the fence. To start with:

Airphil Express , who right now is in dire need of pilots to keep their new A-320 flying , is desperately pirating rated Cebu Pac A-320 pilots to their fold. The current offer is 1.5 Million pesos sign-in bonus for rated Captains and P800,000 bonus for rated F/O's for direct hire Captain upgrade.. They are even offering to pay an existing pilot contract just to transfer with them. and to make the offer more juicer, latest news weve heard is that the management were able to make the productivity pay tax free.(which Cebu Pac refuses to implement, despite Zest, Tiger, now Airphil) As such, 2 Captains immediately grab the offer and signed the contract right away , while 6 more Captains are studying the contract in details. For the F/O, the latest count is 17 have already submitted their intent with Airphil Flt Ops/HR and just waiting for the resolution of finer prints in their contract negotiation Of this 17 FO's, 6 have resigned effective Dec and is just waiting for their Captain Upgrade Sim Trng this Dec at Hongkong.

For the Tiger Airways news - 8 Captains and 4 F/O with Dec 1 effectivity of resignation, are already in the middle of Tiger Integration training in Singapore. In addition, 20 Cebu Pac F/A's will be resigning effective Dec and will be joinig the pilot group on the Dec 15 inaugural lunch of Tiger Philippines operations. With 6 more airbus slated to arrive by next year (total of 18 till 2012) , more pilots are expected to cross the other side of the fence. With the salary range of US $ 9000 net (80 hrs) for Captains, US $ 6,500 net (80hrs) for FO and 60,000 for F/A, the offer is very tempting since it is locally Clark based with less red-eye and more days off.

so the situation right now is very volatile in Cebu Pac. Mark Breen , the architect of all these pilots stress and distress, is ordering series of emergency meeting and in fact,gave marching orders for the immediate Captain upgrade training of 20 FO to address the issue.:D:D however , the training Department is in limbo on who will be trained since the 20 senior F/O's have already signified their intent to transfer with Tiger and Airphil. .http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ies/boohoo.gif.

Higher management is now in panic mode.:ugh: Even Lance is working on a last minute pilot renumeration package to stop this exodus. :ugh: But we think its too late. Cebu Pac has not learned its lesson well . its always in reactive mode not pro-active one. Had they listen to the pilots issues presented beforehand, things will not turned this way..

In an airline set up this days, one way to survive and be profitable is not on how many aircraft you have, on the number of route's to fly, or on the million of passengers you carry.....but will always be dictated by the number of trained pilots you have..Most start up airlines now, from india to singapore to china, dont have A-320 pilots to fly their parked aircraft ....yet Cebu Pac is just allowing that the training, skills and expertise they have invested in through the years to be put into waste and be beneficial to others.

so...... Expect more exodus. cebu Pac to lose more skills and expertise...expect flight cancellation starting december or january and expect the coming airbus to be idle and parked on the ground with no pilots to fly..expect Lance to blame MB as the culprit of all this bruhaha and send him to tora bora :D:D

cebu air shares
 

winglet,if these information you are dishing out is leaked to the broadsheet or broadcast media, the share value of Cebu Air stocks will plummet down MB's ass. your report is very revealing and accurate. reactive and not proactive aptly describe the present management. all because they are afraid to entail present cost. now the future cost of acquiring and training new pilots will confront them with dilated tongue.

airphil, zest, tiger/seair. i think you're missing another 2 airlines who are set to start a320 ops in 2011 and 2012. every pilot with an ear on the ground had an idea something like this was about to explode, so i don't think cebu pac management never knew about this. why were they not prepared?

well, i believe nothing like this has happened before anywhere in the world (period of pilot glut in 2008 to suddenly swinging into a pilot's market in just two years), so i suggest everybody stay smart. sounds like election time again, choose wisely! best of luck to everyone. :)

that includes MB. :ok:

I believe it has already started...looking at the stocks right now, Cebu Air shares has dropped 1.27%

Hi winglet777,

It looks like Cebu is desperately in need of Captains and F/Os :D I´m A320 rated and current, and I´m also desperately in need :ugh: but in my case of an A320 F/O position...I´m A320 rated and current, JAA licence, and I couldn´t find anything here in old Europe since my contract end (2010.09.30).

If you know the way to approach Cebu, and if you´re kind enough to let me have that info, I would really appreciate a lot.

All the best,

João Caracol