That rumor is not true concerning the freighter early commands. It was true when the company tried to hire directly into the CA seat on the Classic out of Manchester. There is no way that I could see anyone off the street coming in and passing "the Cathay way" along with learning the airplane to a CA standard.

That said, I fly with guys all the time that went for the freighter command in 2-4 years and passed. This could all change though as the company is looking at possibly integrating the fleets so there would not be any designated freighter Captains. That would move the upgrade further down the road.

aupilot,
If you eventually went to Hong Kong you would make a lot more than Airtran. If you want to stay in NA, you would have to do the comparisons. On top of the payscale we get a few others like flight duty pay etc. that aren't much but do end up adding another few hundred bucks a month. A friend of mine is a 12 year CA on the freighter and all in he made just over $250K in 2007. It is up to you to decide why you want to leave Airtran. If it is purely monetary then it will take you time to make up the lost income in starting over. If there are other reasons then it may be worth it.

One more that I forgot, I don't count left over allowances in the salary. That, for me, is about $700 per month. We don't get per diem per se, we get an allowance based on someone actually looking at meals etc. on the overnight. For example, in ANC our allowance for a 24 hour period is about $134 or more depending on what time you get in. I can't eat $134 worth of grub in one day so I take home lots of leftovers. The allowance is paid in cash at the hotel so no need to go to the ATM for local currency if you go somewhere else.