Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - CX. Canada's unofficial 2nd airline?

I just noticed in the inflight magazine describing about their flight and cabin crew and thought it was interesting to note that CX's Flight Deck crew are from HongKong, USA, Australia, UK and Canada, and their Flight Attendants are from 11 Asian lands and CANADA.

Of course this means that the ones from Canada originally immigrated there from HKG and once they have gained citizenship, returned to HKG to live. Having gained employment with CX, they travel with their Canadian passports, and hence are the "12th" asian land attendants!

Makes sense, more or less. Also, CX flight attendant's union is based in (union-friendly) Vancouver, if I remember correctly....

I believe that CX actually has a handful of Caucasian flight attendants who were hired as a Vancouver base some years ago. I will check with the person who told me about it and clarify exactly what the deal was.

This is for the ELIGIBLE BACHELORS!

On a December CX flight LAX-HKG, one of the flight attendants said, that she really wanted to move to the States!! Said with strong emotions and passion deep down from inside.
I thought she meant, that even included getting married to a US citizen. She loved shopping in NY!

Didn't ask her if she would continue to fly or take care of things in her new home.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by B747-437B:
I believe that CX actually has a handful of Caucasian flight attendants who were hired as a Vancouver base some years ago. I will check with the person who told me about it and clarify exactly what the deal was.</font>

Uh... no.

CX has always maintained itself to be an Asian carrier. All hirings are decided in HKG. I've never seen an ad for CX in Canada. Maybe for GROUND agents, yes. But for flight attendants, I doubt it.

Pure hearsay: CX does only hire FEMALE FAs from Taiwan, and only MALE FAs from Canada. I am pretty much sure about the first one, since a friends' driver was rejected with exactly that explanation. In any case, why would an airline make this distinction? Why only Canadian boys?

- and yes, I saw a male Caucasian FA on HKG-SFO last spring, Asian airline or not.

not right.

many female FA based in YVR, miss HK of 1999 was one of them.

CX has moved all the asian FA to be based in HK (i.e. including those who are from Taiwan/Japan/etc), and Canada is, i believe the second hub for FA base

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by pegasus8228:
and Canada is, i believe the second hub for FA base</font>How does this work? Presumably those based in YVR cannot work the SFO and LAX flights (even the YYZ flight would be hard to staff using YVR based FAs). Wouldn't a hub in Europe make more sense? CX now has more seats HKG-LHR than on any other route ... I wonder how they do manage the staffing? I have no idea, and it must be quite a problem for an airline the size of CX (too small for economy of scale, but too large to be haphazard in organization).

i think your hypothesis is more or less to the point.

i think the FA for europe and USA routes are all HK based. (except hkg-yvr-jfk route, who are YVR based).

low labor costs (from S & SE Asian countries) is also one of the main reason, ... and
i think labour law also plays a part in this. you know the labor union and labor protection in western countries...

CX does have many of its pilots based in LHR. on LHR-HKG flight you will often see a couple pilots in the F cabin. for some reason they cannot operate flights starting in LHR, and have to be flown back to HKG to start the journey. So they are flown from LHR back to HKG, with those 10hours also counted as pilotting hours.
--- this was quoted as one of the reasons why CX pilot cost was so high, and that they wanted to phase out these contracts.


[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 01-05-2003).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mhtaipei:
..- and yes, I saw a male Caucasian FA on HKG-SFO last spring, Asian airline or not. </font>

I think maybe he's Eurasian? I;ve seen many eurasian flight attendants mainly from the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and India.

FYI - the YVR based FA would mostly work their hours based on sectors. ie... YVR-HKG. HKG-?-HKG. HKG-YVR.

They need not fly specifically on the YVR-JFK-YVR or YVR-HKG-YVR routes.




[This message has been edited by Guy Betsy (edited 01-06-2003).]

I flew YVR-JFK with a YVR based asian crew and if the FA hadn't told me I'd never have known she wasn't from HKG.

GB, and everyone

CX YVR based FAs only fly YVR/HKG/YVR and YVR/JFK/YVR, you will only see them on a B744 aircraft and they will not mix flying with HKG based crew

and up to date only one Caucasian girl still working as a Senior Purser(uniform in purple), others are immigrants from HKG/Taiwan/Main Land China/Japanese/Singapore/Malaysia plus Canadian Born Chinese (Junior Crew), and transfered from HKG CX HKG/Filipina/India(Senior Crew)

The recuritment ads were on YVR local newspaper in 1997 and 1998

How do I know soo much, cos my friend was one of them and she has just moved back to HKG 2 months ago, and I'm still waiting for a chance to join them

In 1998 (I believe... it was during the "Lucky Draw" promotion), flying CGK-SIN on CX, I was surprised to encounter a fairly junior Canadian-born female Caucasian FA. She told me that she was fluent in either Mandarin or Cantonese (can't remember which).

Maybe my next post should be "AC. Asia's 2nd airline."

On most of my flights, there are numerous asian flight attendants. Not that they only speak asian languages. On a recent YUL-SFO flight, the entire crew of 3 were asians. But between them they spoke 11 languages, and non were asian born. 1 was Argentinian-Chinese, 1 was Maritius-Chinese and the other was Canadian-born from Montreal who spoke only English, French, German and a spatter of Cantonese.

On flights on AC to asia, I've encountered asian flight attendants who spoke French and one particular blond haired blue eyed Canadian guy who was the asian qualified flight attendant. His Mandarin puts mine to shame!

That's how I wound up flying for AC those many years ago.

I was language qualified in Arabic and Chinese, so I was doing mostly LHR-BOM-SIN.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by AC*SE:
That's how I wound up flying for AC those many years ago.

I was language qualified in Arabic and Chinese, so I was doing mostly LHR-BOM-SIN.</font>

Really? I worked for CP those many years ago too. But only for a very short time as CP just bought over Wardair and all hell broke loose after.

We should get together when I come to YVR next week.

CX has a mini-hub in Vancouver. All the f/a's are mostly YVR based.

Saw some f/a's when i got the chance to work at CX in YVR for 2 weeks.