brunos

Sorry, but your information is incorrect.
CX uses zone pricing based on distance.
Current one-way ID fare for Europe in J is USD214. To SFO it is USD264. Tax has to be added. USD64 to BKK.
It is a bit in the order of 10% of Business saver fare, not Flex.

Two additional comments.
- Sure, it is not easy for the 20,000 CX employees to get space on busy days. But pilots come first, so they have a big chance on most days. As you probably know, CX has a tool that predicts the probability of getting a staff seat in each class and flight. That is not fool-proof and a delayed/cancelled flight on the same route can drastically change the odds. But it helps planning, especially when you know that you are number 1.

- When you have a total compensation package of numerous HKD millions with salary, bonuses, housing package, schooling package,etc, I would tend to agree with Christep that traveling in business (you and your family) at these fares is nearly free.

brunos

You are clearly not CX staff, or you could easily access the current zone fare table that is valid until 31 October 2017. SFO and YVR are in zone 8, the other US destinations are in zone 9.

I am not saying that this is an extraordinary perk. All airlines have such a perk. Just trying to set the record straight.

smacman

Are you sure about that?

brunos

Apologies. You are right that my post was poorly worded. And the use of "busy days", "big chance" and "most" without quantitative support is a bit meaningless.

I tend to be an optimist and see the glass half full rather than half empty.

But when a flight is full, it is full and unless last minute cancellation (or missed connection) there is little hope, even for an "old" pilot. And we all know holiday periods when flights are full and possibly overbooked.
But with a little planning and flexibility (like when there are many daily flights), there is a very good chance on most other days as you are number one in priority (because you are an "old" pilot). It is never 100% and I have no statistics.

drivingflyingwalking

Delete

christep

Source: https://www.cathaypacific.com/conten...-report-en.pdf

There were (in year 2015) 4 flight staff earning HK$5-5.5M, and a total of 539 earning more than HK$3M. There are about 2500 Cathay pilots, and about 2500 "flight staff" earned more than HK$1M. In that year only 6 "Directors" and 551 other staff earned more than HK$1M.

So clearly you are badly misinformed.

1010101

Possibly a ploy to push some of the expensive senior Captains into early retirement. 100k housing allowances were handed out as standard in the 80s/90s and some of those guys are still years away from mandatory retirement. Every time i speak to any of the senior guys i know they say how the airline is going down the pan and they cant wait to retire.

brunos

A housing option was to pay the mortgage of house bought. Even better than monthly rent. Wonder what will happen to that.

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.....

1010101

I cant think of anyone i know who took the rent option. They, and there isn't many of them left to be fair, all own multiple properties in HK now paid for by CX.

fairhsa

As someone who lives in HK, I find it ludicrous that pilots are getting this much in housing allowance. Thats more than the entire salary of many of my top managers - who then have to live as well as find housing for those amounts. Other than bankers, most people in HK live on salaries well under these levels and just adjust their living accordingly - basically live in a smaller flat! It's a choice for those of us have to figure out.

1010101

These contracts were given decades ago, pre-1997 mostly, when noone wanted to live in HK and Cathay needed to offer some incentives. Much of unionised Europe / USA is also finding out its hard to get people off these kind of deals down the line. You'll be glad to know no newly employed pilot is getting anywhere close to that.

christep

And yet by now presumably at least 600 CX pilots earn more than HK$250,000 per month, which is really a huge amount of money by any reasonable standard (it is about 16 times the median income and 10 times the median household income).

1010101

It is a lot, but you must look at the context. It's 20% of the total pilot group and most of those are long term employees with huge experience. I would (and do) pay a premium to fly CX because of that experience over other airlines in the region.

The drive to cut costs is far more worrying to me, the quality of pilots joining has dropped significantly in recent years.

brunos

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.