Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific to offer pilots 3.8% rise in basic salary but union says crews will need to fly more hours to get increase

Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways will offer its pilots a 3.8 per cent rise in their basic salary next year, but some will have to fly more hours to qualify for the increase, the Post has learned.

According to an internal Cathay memo seen by the Post, an entry-level second officer will be offered HK$34,158 (US$4,382) a month in basic salary starting in January, while top-level captains will get up to HK$114,924.

But the Cathay pilots’ union argued flight crews needed to fly more to achieve the rise offered because they were paid by the hour.

Hourly flight pay for the basic salary differs for Airbus and Boeing pilots. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

“It announced a pay rise of 3.8 per cent next year, but before that, it increased the number of hours that the pilots fly,” said Paul Weatherilt, chairman of the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association.

“It’s simply making the pilots work more for the same money.”

Hourly flight pay for the basic salary differs for the airline’s Airbus and Boeing pilots, but they all need to work “minimum monthly block hours”. Any extra time they fly is calculated using an hourly rate.

In another internal memo earlier this month, the carrier said it would increase the minimum monthly flight target for pilots from 47.83 hours to 49 hours for the A330 and A350 fleet in 2024. That means pilots will have to fly 2.4 per cent more hours to qualify for their basic salary.

The hourly rate for an entry-level second officer with the Airbus fleet will rise from HK$686.60 to HK$697.10 – a 1.51 per cent increase – if they work the required 49 hours in a month. The basic monthly salary will rise to HK$34,158 – 3.8 per cent more than the current HK$32,907, which is for 47.83 hours.

Similarly, a top-level captain will only make 1.31 per cent more per hour next year, despite the 3.8 per cent increase on the current HK$110,716 in their basic salary if they work 49 hours in a month.

The required flight hours for Boeing aircraft are being reduced from 38.5 hours to 36.75 hours starting next year for Cathay’s 747 fleet, while the requirement of 49 flight hours for the 777 fleet remained unchanged.

Weatherilt said the company was trying to get the most out of pilots flying Airbus aircraft, the carrier’s biggest fleet, to recover.

Cathay will continue to review pay and benefits so it remains a competitive employer, a spokesman says. Photo: Jelly Tse

Cathay Pacific and its budget carrier HK Express aim to reach 70 per cent of pre-pandemic flight capacity by the end of the year and fully restore levels by the end of 2024.

“Some of the pilots who are working the hardest are those on the A330 and A350. Some of them are flying so hard that they have reached the limit, and they have to have the next month off,” he said, referring to a Civil Aviation Department flight rule.

Under the department’s Avoidance of Fatigue in Aircrews guidelines, flight crew members should not fly if their total flight time in the previous 28 consecutive days exceeds 100 hours or 900 hours in the previous 12 months.

“Nine hundred hours is the most you can fly in a year. And if you hit 90 hours a month, you cannot fly the next month. That’s how hard some of these pilots are working,” Weatherilt said.

A Cathay Pacific spokesman said pilots’ target flying hours were periodically reviewed to offer them the same opportunity to earn productivity pay irrespective of the aircraft type they operated.

“Recent changes announced to the 2024 targets bring our largest fleet – the Airbus – back to pre-pandemic levels,” he said.

Cathay would continue to review pay and benefits to ensure it remained a competitive employer, he added.

“In addition to this salary increase for our pilots, we have recently made improvements to allowances related to reserve and simulator duties,” he said.

“These changes follow the recent announcement of a discretionary bonus for 2023 and reflect the gradual return to pre-Covid flying levels for our crew along with the continued growth of our flights.”

The carrier earlier suffered a staggering 99 per cent decline in its daily passenger numbers with worldwide travel crippled by the coronavirus pandemic and the city imposing strict flight curbs.

In October 2020, Cathay implemented Hong Kong’s biggest mass lay-offs in three decades, axing 5,300 jobs locally and closing its regional airline in a desperate restructuring attempt to survive the pandemic.

About 4,000 cabin crew, 600 pilots, and 700 ground staff and office workers were told they would be made redundant in a HK$2.2 billion restructuring. The remaining cabin crew and pilots were presented with cost-saving contracts.

In August, the carrier reported a net profit of HK$4.26 billion for the first half of 2023, its first in three years.

Two months later, the airline started calculating pilots’ productivity pay on either the hours they were rostered, or the actual hours they flew – whichever was higher – to boost staff morale.