Aviation News: Cathay Pacific to close pilot base in Canada

[News]

Hong Kong April 23,2021/ Scudrunners News/ The South China Morning Post reported that Cathay Pacific will shut their Canadian Pilot bases and has proposed the same for their Australian and New Zealand bases.

Previously Cathay closed other overseas cabin crew bases and shut its regional airline Cathay Dragon in an effort to save money during the ongoing global pandemic.
Those cuts resulted in almost 6000 jobs lost. The once mighty Cathay Pacific has struggled even pre pandemic as other global airlines such as Emirates have eaten into their market share.

The Covid 19 pandemic has taken a heavy toll on the finances of the company as it began to correct course. Last month the airline reported a loss of 2.8 Billion USD and is said the remaining Hong Kong-based pilots and cabin crew had to agree to permanent pay cuts to keep their jobs. Cathay, which lacks a domestic market at a time when international borders are largely shut, last month reported a record annual loss of HK$21.65 billion ($2.8 billion).
Cathay has been burning through as much 250 million USD a month. The carrier stated last week “that figure would begin to reduce slightly due to an easing of cargo crew quarantine requirements.”

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[Big Pistons Forever]

This just sucks. I know several Cathay pilots, they are all great guys and directly contributed to Cathay’s success. They all got a one line PFO email

[Doin_Time]

That kind of thing sucks. A good friend got a similar "redundant" email from Emirates as a 380 skipper... But... This is the risk side of the risk vs reward calculation. Great tax free money when it was good, but no security net in bad times. Most folks know this; or should know this, going into one of the expat jobs. Compare that to the conditions in Canada and the crap pay has some support from a union and labour laws... My friend took home, in one year, what it would take 3-4 years to do in Canada; maybe more. He has no immediate need to go back to work.

[Liquid_Charlie]

The gravy train has left the station. Cathay was a world class gig 30 years ago but time marches on and the pressure of low fares takes it's toll on class structure of any airline. The big money, big bonuses and all that has gone. You are just a grunt now and working abroad, the fact is you have no job security. You can wake up "on the street".

A very good friend of mine went "off shore" many years ago. Living in Marseilles, sail boat and living the life. Working rotations out of Libya and making the big bucks tax free. The life style lost it's "shine" and he decided he and wifey wanted to move back to Canada. Ironically all this international travel and working made him realise that life in Canada was pretty good.

His biggest complaint was trying to get back into canadian aviation and how all his counterparts and contemporaries had moved onto good careers and he was starting all over again. He stuck by it and did quite well back in canada plus he had a "hockey sock" full of money he had saved and invested when he was off shore.

Grass is always greener on the other side. Salaries might be lower in canada but the potential is there is to make enough to live well. Cost of living here is still lower than other parts of the world.