Saddest ever captain retirement flight CX872 11/22/2019
 

I just got off CX872 SFO-HKG. It is Hong Konger Captain Kwok’s retirement final flight and Cathay has absolutely no fanfare other than an announcement by ISM in English after landing. No clapping by crew and passengers and no water cannon salute whatsoever. Nothing at gate too. Is this how Cathay celebrates retirement? I asked a flight attendant upon exit and she aid she’ll send my salute to captain later. How sad!!

All the fanfares you've mentioned does not happen regularly at most airlines except for publicity stunts. They add costs to operation and adds no value to revenue, people don't choose an airline for how they celebrate retirements. After a long flight I'm sure most people would rather get on with their journey than to stick around acting happy for someone's retirement, who they have only heard from but not seen.

Cathay has provided the captain a fulfilling career, one of the best remuneration in the industry (big pay cheque, housing allowance, benefits etc) and a big fat pension plan if he had chosen wisely. Flight crew were the best treated group of workers in the whole Swire. That I assume is what he most cared for, not a PR stunt after duty when none of the crew are paid for their time.

I am also certain the whole crew had a very nice dinner at SFO during their layover, assuming the captain was well liked throughout his career. Management will probably have an office gathering of sort when he goes in for retirement paperwork.

I think this is partly cultural. In many parts of the west, retirement is a time when colleagues wish the best for the retiree for his/ her 'new life' after working so hard all these years. It boosts the workforce's morale that administration, or at least the other colleagues care about the retiree. It is commemoration of the many years of hard work and service.

I lived in the east for a long time and I am now back in the west. It was a very stark contrast that retirements would always be viewed as a quiet moment. Like what was said above, when someone retired (from where I was working at that time), colleagues would just treat that person out for dinner. No fanfare. Come to think of it, I've flown CX, TG, PR, etc and I have never had a water salute on any of the flights where a captain retired. Understandably so.

In my current job back here in the west, the last time a colleague retired, management threw a big catered party and gave the retiree an expensive camera because she said she would like to learn photography at her retirement.

To each his own.

On this basis, I've made it known to management that I would like to learn how to drive on my retirement!

I think that CX, in general, doesn’t make a big deal of ‘occasions’- inaugural routes/planes etc, for example.

do think that they should step up for employees.

‘People. They make an airline’..while that’s well and truly buried, they should appreciate that employee relations isn’t something that they’re rated particularly high on..

Its not as if there was a majority of "regular" customers on that flight who knew the Captain.... Would you expect to join in celebrating the retirement of an employee at some OTHER business (a bank say) if you happened to be there on their last day? Would you expect the business to make a big (public) deal out of it?

Why should CX celebrate the retirement of such captain?

Reminds me of this old American Airlines commerical
.

Do think CX should try to value their colleagues a little more, no need to go all out and delay the operation, but a friendly goodbye, clapping and cake would all go a longway. Have seen all of this on both Western, African and Asian (KE, SQ) carriers in my time. That said, we don't know the reason for the pilot leaving the airline and whether the retirement has been made on a happy or perhaps mandatory age/health (even more so given the HK economy) reasons. I work for a major African airline, where we have a mandatory retirement age (well below the Western standards) - and assure you not all pilots are eager to wave the prestige, glamour and salary goodbye.

i dont see what OP' concern/issue/fuss is... people retire all the time

Aim High; since this is FT, learn to fly!