Time for Cathay to correct pilot pitch
It's a kinda' magic. That's what Cathay Pacific says and, looking at how things have turned around in this airline, you've got to believe it.
Cast your mind back to late 1998, after a full year of collapsing passenger traffic and with Cathay looking at its first annual loss as a listed company. There was an element of panic in those new offices at Chek Lap Kok and management took it out on the pilots.
They're overpaid, said the bosses. Something must have slipped here but we're going to bring them back into line.
And that is what they did, with much talk about desperate times and at a cost of much ill will among the pilots.
You can only sympathise with the pilots when they now wonder what all the fuss was about. Cathay reported earnings of HK$2.2 billion for last year, most of it in the last six months of the year, and last week announced an HK$8 billion spending exercise on new wide-bodied aircraft to meet regional demand.
Bit of a problem here, however. It increasingly seems the big shortage these days is not just seat capacity but pilot capacity. Cathay wants to hire 220 more of them. Where? Just under 50 senior pilots reportedly took the early redundancy packages Cathay offered in the downturn and, with the upturn, the rest are working flat out on family non-friendly rosters with many likely to reach their maximum hours well before the year ends.
They will start going on the sidelines this summer, just when many of their colleagues would like to take their holidays, and who will fly all new planes coming on stream then? Training of new pilots is too slow a business to fill the gap and surveys these days also show that it is no longer considered a big glory job. Potential recruits (they must have talked to Cathay pilots) cite disrupted lifestyles and inadequate pay. No wonder there is talk of a worsening worldwide shortage of pilots.
The seat capacity side is also interesting. Boeing and Airbus fell over themselves to offer deals during the downturn but Cathay did not like the timing, what with having sidelined or got rid of older jumbos that it had just spent a great deal of money refurbishing (management missed the downturn as well as the upturn).
Within months, however, it was scrambling to look for aircraft again and found several in the mainland. These were unfortunately a little short of the it's-a-kinda-magic services that Cathay business class passengers expect and there were naturally complaints. No Cathay country manager wants them on his route.
Those country managers will be crossing their fingers again. Three of the nine aircraft Cathay is acquiring are to come from another carrier, believed to be Korean Air although Cathay won't confirm. Expect more enquiries at the business check-in counter this year.
Let's have some understanding. Cathay has gone through difficult patches before but never experienced a downturn so sharp and unexpected as the one that came in 1998. Nor could anyone really see how brief it would be. Critics need to bear this in mind. Could they have done better themselves? Nonetheless, when you think how bitterly Cathay was complaining 18 months ago about airport charges and greedy pilots, you wonder whether management shouldn't concede now that it overdid its pitch. The pilots will be just as tough about getting their own back unless it does.
This is not the kind of thing you expect to hear from Cathay, however. It would be so unusual in fact that there is only one thing you could say if you did hear it.
It's a kinda' magic.
