If the reports voiced this year re pilots leaving Cathay were true they would I estimate have minus about 500 pilots in the team whereas some 600 pilots have been recruited. This has resulted in the airline having now over 550 more pilots than at the beginning of the year.
Who I am wondering are flying the aircraft ?

I have a question for the poster re his unsubstantiated comments re the quality of staff. Where previously did the airline recruit staff in HK ?

Further he omits to mention the new CC crew base established in London and the many previously employed cabin crew returning to the airline plus new Philippine and Thai and Malaysian crew. The airline was last month also advertising for Japanese speaking crew. These are facts not the gossip and hearsay. presented above.

As reported by the SCMP earlier this month 'New cabin crew hires at Cathay Pacific Airwayscan earn as much as HK$20,000 (US$2,550) per month following an increase in pay, as part of (new) initiatives by Hong Kong’s flag carrier.
Apparently in HK that the airline now has 500 more trained CC than at the start of the year
It is true of course that most large airlines are presently struggling to recruit enough staff, crew and pilots. - with several including a large Australian operator having to cancel routes due to lack of pilots.

As we all know it has been particularly difficult for Cathay as they and Hong Kong were effectively closed for 2 years.
They are however managing month by month expanding the routes toward 2019 levels and crewing the aircraft.

I don't know an airline where staff /unions do not claim that they are underpaid, understaffed and overworked.

I can't comment on CX post-Covid except to say that I'm just back from a Covid-delayed honeymoon in the UK/Europe and we flew EK in F for only a little more than CX wanted for J to LHR. EK F varied between (as good as CX F used to be plus a shower) on the A380, to (out of this world good) on the "game changer" 777.

And I learn from others that almost all CX cabin crew are still wearing masks! That for me is a show-stopper immediately in a premium cabin.

So as someone who has I guess about 1.5MM on CX and was Diamond for many years pre-Covid, I don't think I'll be back any time soon.

Pretty much the case with most people at least in my circles as well.

Ek, QR, SQ are miles ahead of CX and people have moved on. It is a shame cause HK is such a cool city.
CX staff dont care about customers anymore.
StIll wearing masks like all your customers are carriers of disease?
Why did you become an FA if you are too scared of other humans?!!

it's only a matter of time when the lost Pilot talent results in an incident as well.

Also covid affected other countries and airlines as well.
They just did not have the stupidity to get rid of their best staff and thus could recover faster.

You've got the wrong end of the stick. Service providers here still wear masks as part of service (not getting customers sick) (less consistently when on the ground). Customers are no longer expected to reciprocate.

What's wrong with Ronald Lam? Genuine question - I have no direct knowledge, but everything I've either heard or read about Lam is that he is a capable, hardworking, and detail oriented CEO. I think he was also a trusted lieutenant of Rupert Hogg when Hogg was CEO.

Don't think he had anything to do with the terrible Cathay rebranding as a lifestyle brand idea either.

This level of concern for the customer is something really new in HK!

And something completely alien to the rest of the world (or at least the non-asian world). On my return to HK (on EK, no masks) I saw more people wearing masks in the first 10 minutes than I had seen in the previous 30 days in the UK and Europe (and almost all of those were Asian tourists).

I find this total inability to comprehend risk amongst a significant proportion of people in HK to be utterly dumbfounding.

It still happens quite often with Japan service providers too. It depends on the operator/supervisor I guess, and mirrors local customer expectations.

Nothing new at all and has probably been this way since SARS. People who are sick commonly put on a mask as a courtesy to others. The continued wearing of masks by some (not even close to all, and a continuously decreasing proportion) CX crew is simply an extension of this. As percysmith says, also common in Japan which is of course famed for its manners.

There is no confusion about risk in this equation.

Still letting masks bother you? Of all legitimate gripes about CX and service, masks is nowhere near the top of the list - if it even makes the list at all.

Also, everyone, let's take our tone down a notch - I understand that we all have frustrations directed at CX, but let's not mix in personal attacks. Concerns about English levels are legitimate, but calling them "MK girls" is derogatory.

I think the CX forum is currently un-modded so let's try to behave ourselves!

IF you have CX DM, and SQ flights upcoming, an SQ status match can be requested. I did and received it.

Do we want to blame CX for that, or should we consider this the consequence of the Chinazation of Hong Kong?
I did write many times about this, some posts got removed due to being considered "inappropriate", though that does not change the reality of the (harsh political) environment CX is operating in.

As said, it's not only about capabilities but also about the environment to operate in. The moment you have a big outstanding debt from the government, all kinds of government officials want to enforce their personal preferences, which may seriously deviate from wise business decisions. There are reasons why LH (and other airlines) did want to get rid of the government Covid loans asap. For CX that'll be much more difficult due to A) the size of the debt and B) the political landscape, where it is considered completely normal for governments to "run" a business without the knowledge, and capabilities, though with conflicting interests (to put it mildly).

Masks = some crew on Cathay ware masks some of the time (personal choice) - all crew on JAL ware masks it seems all of the time - some S'pore airlines crew ware masks some of the time - some crew on other Asian airlines ware masks some or all of the time.
Can anyone honestly blame them ?
Whatever your answer best get used to masks on all Asian airlines because they are going to be with us for a long time yet I suspect

Just as well then that Cathay intends pay off in full any debt to the government by year end .
Personally though I don't see government involvement necessarily a negative - Singapore airlines seems to run pretty well and that is a government majority owned airline. It rather depends on the government perhaps ?

And no crew at all on my recent Emirates, Tap, Ryanair, & KLM flights wore masks (including several Korean and HK crew on Emirates).

For me it's just another reason to move on from CX and similar. If I'm paying hard-earned cash for an F flight to Europe then a key part of that is the service. Service is severely degraded when you have to keep asking people to repeat stuff and you can read facial expressions.

How's that going to work in an emergency? If the first line of CX's emergency drill for cabin crew isn't "Take the f**king mask off so that people will understand you clearly" then someone needs to get them rewritten PDQ.