First off, thanks to all of you for making this a professional forum. I just finished reading the 160 pages of mostly garbage on pprune which was mostly 2 guys arguing back and forth. In the few pages here, there's rum 151 of information compared to pprune's watered-down coke. I got the invite to the SO initial interview for Aug 18, but just turned it down. I did 10 yrs USAF, 2800TT 1600 Turbine PIC, Family w/ 3 kids, now an FO in a regional.

Here's why the only people that should accept the current SO package are under 25, single, with little to no flight experience: You get no flight time credit recogized by other airlines, no T.O./Landings, 6 year bond, 4-6 year upgrade forcast just to FO, and a compensation package that can't cover your cost of living in HK.

If CX wants talent w/ experience, 1. change the SO T&C to what it was 3 years ago, or 2. recruit DEFOs.

I just got off the phone with a buddy that went to a recent CX pilot meeting and he said they spent a long time discussing the SO dilemma. The pilots feel the SO package should be improved to attract better talent; management feels that since they're going to fly with 2 SOs and 1 FO (instead of 2 FOs) that they don't need to compensate the SOs. The pilots suggested to the CP that they should allow non-HK based SOs to attract more talent, but the CP pointed out they'd still have to go to HK when they got upgraded to FO.

Looks like we need to hold out and wait for the SO needs of the company to get dire, and maybe then they'll improve their offer!