windchaser777

triplefives

CX has a direct trainee SO program and an experienced SO program. The experienced ones probably get paid on par if not more than US regionals but the trainee SO's are definitely not cracking the $1M HKD mark.

It does seem circuitous to opt to be a SO instead of trying to earn stripes as quickly as possible - a captain generally will have more lucrative career options regardless of company.

380Flyer

Let's put some perspective to all this CX bashing from South China Morning Post (SCMP):

- If you read the journalist posts on CX reporting, you will quickly learn that he has nothing good to say about the airline and I think he has been cornered into a tight space to write rubbish that he writes. Not only is he doing injustice to his career, he is also ruining his very own reputation.

- Alot of the reporting in SCMP should be taken with a pinch of salt as there is alot of sensational details to the articles they write and post.

- If things were so bad at CX, you would see the airline melt down to pieces by now. By looking at their balance sheet, they are extremely well managed and with the transformation they are undergoing, this will make them even stronger.

I see bright skies ahead for CX and I will continue my loyalty to the airline despite all the bitterness by SCMP and their inability to obtain the First Class upgrades shows what lengthen they can go to for bashing them in every aspect they can. Ever wondered by CX doesn't advertise in SCMP? The above says it all.

Happy flying and to bright blue skies ahead.

kaka

sxc

It depends who you ask. Others say that this reporter is a mouthpiece for CX.

CX HK

Indeed. In fact many comments on his articles (who is a fellow active FT-er btw) says that his daily articles are akin to SCMP advertising CX daily.

And @380Flyer - I do not mean this in a provocative manner - but given your optimism in CX's future, wondering if you bought any 293.hk for the long run?

HarbourGent

It has fallen through the floor in recent years and I now do not buy it and often do not bother even with a free copy. Its bias is obvious, but it also lacks local news, has too little reporting and too much tittle tattle and focusses too much on digital. Meanwhile its cover price is up thirty per cent or some such in the past five years or so.

triplefives

Interesting figures from Danny Lee's most recent article

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...er-hours-flown

Revamped package:
Second Officers: $538k basic pay + $168k housing allowance + $168k cash allowance = at least $874k per annum
First Officers: $825k basic pay + somewhere between 14k to 30k allowance per month + at least $168 cash allowance = $1.16m per annum
Captains: $1.8m basic pay + $360k housing allowance + at least $168k cash allowance = at least $2.3m per annum

Despite all the gripes from the pilots, flying planes for CX is still a very lucrative proposition.

Cambo

I don't know the figures myself, though my understanding about the crew complains is:
- CX is an organization in transition, which makes motivation reach out towards customer exposed CX employees pretty bad, ie they are left without backing of the CX organization (or even worse, the opposite).
- CX wants to scrap the housing allowance, which is a big issue due to the high HK housing pricing. Looks to me, SO housing allowance (and even FO's), is just suitable for a HK shoe box, with the FO ones a big size shoe. Nice when being 22 yrs old and single, but not so much, when older.
- Pension fund seems to be insufficient for a comfy retire life.
- Second officers are the first 5 years not allowed to touch the controls, which is disastrous for SO hour building/flying experience and their chances to work elsewhere.

christep

You are allowed, indeed expected, to spend some of your salary on housing (like normal people)!

HK$73,000 per month (Almost FIVE TIMES the median income for HK, and about 3 times the median household income) is a heck of a lot of money to be paid for sitting on long haul planes maybe 5 times per month just looking at the dials!

brunos

Again, a major sticky point was the housing allowance for "old" pilots (contracts pre-2008).
As the article mentions the annual housing allowance is above $1 million for quite a few of them and above $500k for most of them.

SinoBritAsia

kaka

HarbourGent

The more one learns of these pilots' terms, the less sympathy one has for their complaints. They seem to me to be living in a 1950s dreamworld combining private sector pay with public sector style benefits.

Cambo

Yeah, this is a world-wide item. Where in the good old days, the piloting crew did represent the company and were the decision makers, nowadays, that pilot position is degraded to bus-driver with a high technical responsibility. Especially the grumpy old ones do have problems to accept the world changed.

On the other hand, piloting is a far from easy job. The number of relevant and potentially disastrous aspects is huge. Don't forget an airplane goes through the air with around 450 kts / 800+ km/h and does not have an option to temporary park on the hard-shoulder to sort out the issues encountered. If things do go haywire, that happens within a couple of seconds. And a mistake is easily made. Think about driving through the fog with a speed of 800 km/h, while maintaining course, altitude and speed (which each influence each other), while glancing at a 15x15 cm screen. Correct a very little bit to abrupt (really a little bit) and the people in the back of the bus get launched towards the ceiling. A minor mistake can have disastrous consequences, with financial liability easily reaching half a billion USD, to give you an idea.

Not to speak about the issues thrown at you, from uncountable sources, let alone your boss expects from you duty times of up to 18 hours a day, several days in a row. Legal duty time for a regular ground based busdriver is around 8 hours, to give you an idea. Fatigue is a big issue for pilots (and cabin crew as well).