Originally Posted by
cxshane
This is not correct - pilots do not automatically get on first. Ground staff, flight attendants, pilots - it's all down to their date of joining and ticketed priority. If a flight attendant with 10 years of service is trying to get on a flight with a pilot with 9 years (with the same priority level) - the flight attendant will be the first one on. Pilots often get bumped in outports with long serving cabin crew ahead of them in priority.
Pilots - do not get bonuses - they MAY receive a 13th month at the discretion of the company.
Yes - the housing allowance is good but hardly any of them are on the figures quoted in the SCMP - most in comfortable accommodation which was part of their contract and influenced their decision to be based in Hong Kong at time of signing.
Talk is lots of disruptions/cancellations around Christmas.....
The current discussion is devoted to slashing benefits for very senior pilots. What many of us refer to "old" pilots on contracts that were signed long ago.
Hence, they do rank high in priority. This is not a thread about staff wait-listing complex CX rules. And the algorithm has many of them besides seniority. And there are "tactics", such as booking F to improve probability of getting J, etc...
My initial reaction was to a post stating that it was extremely difficult and costly for a senior pilots to use staff tickets in F/J and I disagree.
BTW: This is not a criticism of CX staff ticket policy. All airlines have such non-taxable perks (some governments have tried to tax this perk). Some airlines are even more generous. AF comes to mind where staff tickets are even cheaper and can be made available to family (spouse, children, parents) like CX but also a limited number of friends. And when the ac door closes, staff in Y are moved to any empty seat in J or PE.