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Advice Please: Airtran, or Cathay

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It sounds like if you went with Cathy you wouldn't be just a scab but a SUPER SCAB known all over the world. Go to Cathy because I know none of my buddies will be going there. Their airplanes are too big and they fly too far anyway, with a 747-400 as a passenger you get get on sober, get totally drunk, and be sober and ready to fly as soon as your feet hit the pavement. That is tooooooo long.
 
Read this thread:

http://forums.flightinfo.com/showthread.php?threadid=2355

and then run like hell in the other direction!!!

BTW, it is true about the Captain getting fired for throwing peanuts. It happened around lunch time and he was off the property for good by the afternoon, which is funny because one of the Fleet Managers attacked one of the First Officers with a beer bottle a few months earlier and wasn't even disciplined. At CX it pays to be in management!

If you do go for the interview look for the sign on the door that says, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Consider yourself warned.

Take care,
Tref
 
Well there ya go, Pinguin. A scab told you not to scab at Cathay. If there is any harsher indictment of an organization I can't think of it. Don't forget the added bonus of flying with "indigenous" cadet's that can probably tell a flap from an aileron, but may or may not care. Like the last guy said, Cathay's not a springboard, rather it seems to be the deep end. Cheers!
 
Freight Dog,

I deleted the message after I saw yours. I'm sure you can understand why I freaked out. It looked like Cardinal was refering to me. Maybe he can be more specific next time. My apologies to Cardinal if he managed to read my message before I could delete it.

See ya,
Tref
 
That is right, this Eastern scab is telling you to stay away from the complete thing. They are just looking for "outsiders" to solve the internal problems at what will be your expense. When they don't need you anymore they will fire you for dropping peanuts on the flight deck and you will be out the door right now. You will have a type rating and time but all you will do with it is become a Hadj expert and see parts of the world that you didn't know existed. Being an ALPA scab is one thing, being a full-fledged ICAO SUPER SCAB even I wouldn't want to wish that on anyone. Don't go and make my being a scab something worth having. By the way the head of the APA MEC for AA told me to go to EAL as they had an axe to grind with ALPA. Like an idiot I gave it a go with the hope that EAL would merge with CO, or that the rEAL(I like that)pilot's would come back and I would be out on the street but at least with an EAL senority number. Neither happened and I was on a roller-coaster trying to pay the bills at home and I really had no choice but to carry on. EAL was a great airline and all the guys that came back and saved the thing were great. I have nothing but high respect for the guys that didn't walk, for the guys that walked and never came back, and for the guys that came back after walking the picket line. My sincere hope during the complete thing was that the mess would be settled everything would return to normal and I would fade into the sunset. That never happened(I even told a guy that on the picket line, three weeks later he came back flying) the whole thing became a mess after 6 weeks and ALPA knew that had made a wrong decision and everyone lost. As I have tried to say in past post there is a lot to learn from the whole thing if you guys would just stop name calling and listen. STAY AWAY FROM CATHY AND STICK WITH AIRTRAN AND JOE. A BETTER PLACE FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY IF YOU HAVE ONE.
 
"By the way the head of the APA MEC for AA told me to go to EAL as they had an axe to grind with ALPA."

They always have a story. Pinguin, do NOT ruin your life by becoming one of these worthless SCABs with one of your own stories: "I just didn't know about that recruitment ban, blah blah blah blah blah blah."

There are still SCABs at AirTran, but a lot of good honest guys. This should be a no-brainer.

A SCAB is NEVER forgotten!
 
Freight Division

I have a friend at the Freight Division and had my resume dropped there, from my understanding the firing and the other problems are on the passenger side (which by the way I don't make light of). So if you go fly freight you are a scab? Listen I am 2nd generation union guy and I hate scabs, but I don't see going and flying freight as "scabbing" its not struck work.

Anyone agree or disagree?

Frats,
Humble
 
It's a very screwed up divide and conquer game that they are playing with the freighter side. Back around 1996 they split the freighter side off and tried to tell everyone it was a separate company. Hmmm, they used Cathay planes, Cathay sims and instructors, Cathay office space and used the cargo space on the Cathay passenger planes for their balance sheets (even though the fuel costs still counted against the passenger side.)

See what they did was hire Captains and F/Os off the street, even though there were 9 year F/Os waiting for upgrades. (Historically Cathay pilots flew both the passenger and the cargo side of the operation depending on the pattern assignment.) By hiring new freighter pilots off the street they created in effect a C scale. (Which is a bit misleading because pretty much every pilot at CX has a separate deal based on date and country of hire, but the new freighter pay was an all time low.)

This allowed them to reduce costs on the freighter side. And by using the passenger cargo capacity to boost the freighter side revenues and drag down the passenger side because of the lost revenues and increased fuel costs, they made it appear as though the passenger side was doing poorly.

When the Asian economy stumbled in '98 they also wrote off all of the costs of moving to the new airport and shortened the depreciation schedule of all of their aircraft by five years and applied all of those costs in that fiscal year. It made it look like CX had lost money, when in fact they had actually made a profit.

Then of course, they came after the pilots for concessions and tried to split up the union into A scalers and B scalers. (Anyone hired after April '93 NEVER goes onto the A scale.) They told the A scalers to take huge pay cuts or they would be fired and they told the B scalers to stay out of it because it was an A scale issue.

In 1999 they had supposedly agreed to reintegrate the freighters, but because you can't trust CX management any farther than you can kick them, I doubt much has happened.

People were calling the freighter guys scabs way back in '96-'97 and I disagreed, because as you say, it was not struck work. But here's the rub... In Hong Kong there are virtually no labour laws and there is no right to strike. At that time there was no recruitment ban on Cathay Pacific and they were being called scabs, rightly or wrongly, I don't really know. But now that the ban is in effect I think that it would apply equally to both sides of the operation, especially since they are supposedly being reintegrated.

I would say anyone going to any part of CX right now is not only a scab, but is also either incredibly uninformed or incredibly foolish.

Take care and tread carefully,
Tref
 
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