Truth about Cathay
 

Cathay is no longer run by Swire. They used to be but Swire no only owns about 10% of the shares. It is actually owned now by CITIC which is the PRC government. I have heard that Cathay has been planning for sometime to ship in about 10,000 Mainland China pilots. They are just waiting for an excuse to fire the greeedy white pilots. Cathay has already rented out two complete apartment towers for these new pilots close to the airport. A senior Mainland pilot makes only 30,000HKD per month plus housing. That pales in comparison to the 450K USD that a white one makes.

Of course this means that the service and safety on Cathay can only go DOWN. I have actually stopped flying them and have decided to go with Mileage Plus and the rest of Star Alliance when I can.

Cathay has just been going downhill since CITIC took the reigns.

Happy Travels.

Tfong007

That is a terrible assumption to make not to mention very negative.

The CX pilots are good but they are pricing themselves out of a job.

The Chinese pilots with all the facilities Cathay can afford to them can do an equally good job.

Japan and Korea does fine with predominantly local pilots and so does Malaysia. SQ has been heading down that path for a while now and you will soon see CX doing the same.

ownership-wise, yes, CITIC has a larger share than Swire...but as far as I know...most of the senior management at CX are Swire employees, including the Chairman of the Board and the CEO, and most of the directors...others are all CX employees...none are CITIC people, I think...

10,000 pilots seems a bit of an over statement!

Historically, CX had to use Expat pilots because HKG did not have an Air Force to draw pilots from. The point that many CX pilots are white is irrelevant. It is skills and experience that fly aircraft - not the colour of the pilots skin.

As you know, HKG is not exactly a cheap place to raise a family to the same standard as one would in Australia and Canada. In the end, if CX wants pilots from these type of countries then they must pay a rate of pay that allows pilots to live a similiar lifestyle.

I would not knock the pilots, I would seriously look at management and how they are trying to run CX like a flying McDonalds. By the way, many of the supervisors and technical people are expats as well. Skin colour means nothing but it is a playing card that CX manegement has been trying to deal for a while now.

If CX really wants to turn around CX around then it should begin with the realisation that its employees are the greatest assett they have.

Skin color has NOTHING to do with how well someone can pilot a plane.

God, this is exactly the kind of idiotic post that has turned certain other frequent flier boards into flame-war filled forums.

Okay now, let's not bring race into this issue! I definitely 100% agree that it is the skill that counts and not the skin of colour. And what has pilots got to do with the service anywae?

I dun know when CITIC took this "larger" share than Swire but havent CX been improving their quality of service through the introduction of their highly popular First Class and now this mouth-watering biz (from the press release anywae!). And about safety going downhill? Has there been an accident by CX recently ever since CITIC took over. I dun know, maybe i havent been reading the papers recently and have been busy reading the topics on FT!

These are my opinions anywae and please do not bring race into anymore topics in the future!

YEs this is not about the colour of skin and bad talking Chinese pilots etc.

Take someone with basic skills and the will to learn with a half functioning brain then provide the best training and they will be able to fly a plane.

Simplistically put, perhaps, but true and so can we move away from the racist comments tfong007, there is no place here or for that matter anywhere else except maybe amongst your chosen people whomever they unfortunately are.

Wow, then the Republic of China must really be happy about this. If CX is going to deplete the Chinese Air Force of all of it's combat pilots, who's going to be left to bomb Taiwan ?

It takes more than two apartment towers to house 10,000 men. And here I thought there was a housing shortage generally in Hong Kong? How many pilots does CX have now? As hsi.chang has noted, the Taiwanese people will sleep sounder now knowing the entire Chinese air force has been contracted out to fly for CX! Is there a secret training centre in the heart of Mongolia, equipped with dozens of Airbus and Boeing flight simulators, where these pilots are being secretly trained? I am less concerned about the ethnicity of these, or any other, pilots than I would be with their experience flying commercial aircraft. I say this from the standpoint of both pure age, not to mention hours on specific aircraft as co-pilots, let alone as pilots.

I dare say, if CX dismissed all their current pilots and replaced them with recent trainees, public and customer confidence in the airline would plummet, and its balance sheet would turn redder than the Chinese flag! Even the PRC can recognize these consequences.

But then again, who says anything one reads on the internet is true?

Fiction. You should see how many entire blocks of the mid/upper flats are sitting empty. Try Gold Coast and Pacific Place on Tai Tam Road.

where did you obtain this rumour?

FYI.
1. CX is fully controlled by Swire
2. CX has 1200 pilots today. why would they need 10000 for?
3. what is wrong with mainland pilot? how did you find corelation in safety/serice level with skin color and pay rate? did you get worse service at shangri-la hotel in beijing vs HK? is there more accident per M flight in Air China compared with BA/UA/AA/CX?
4. CITIC Pacific is now mostly privately owned, though there is still close relationships with CITIC (in Beijing). So CITIC Pacific itself (which owns some share in CX and controls KA) is not really PRC 'owned'
5. for KA, which is controlled by CITIC Pacific. it is still run by HK people trained by CX (while CX is run by British white people, and they are good managers.). CITIC only has a few people sitting on the board. KA quality is almost no different from CX


please do not spread random rumours. people in this borad are more intelligent than you thought



[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 09-01-2001).]

Well, there is a shortage of AFFORDABLE housing in Hong Kong.

Have you noticed that the original poster of this thread had only recently joined these forums? It may be wise to ignore him/her altogether until he's proven his mettle here.

dup

[This message has been edited by pegasus8228 (edited 09-01-2001).]

Speak for yourself pegasus8228 - I am a lot dumber than most people think