China...
 

How things have changed in just a few months, many companies in China have sent all their foreign pilots home on leave without pay. Not known for how long! Very different environment than just 6 months ago.

I bet they will be surprised how few will return after finding employment elsewhere.

Stupid is as stupid does!!

Too bad. I was looking forward to putting apps in to experience exotic viruses.

Don’t gloat too much yet Dominican as all of Asia is way down. The 300+ Positively tested victims in Japan won’t help matters much. How many people in Japan now routinely avoid going outside and always wear masks when going out? This thing has potential to drastically effect Japan’s air travel demand, also Asia and perhaps the entire world also, so don’t sound so exuberant in the Expat pilot community’s demise in China. It very well could be knocking on Japan’s doors.

Highly doubtful if the Carona Virus takes a foothold in Japan.

You don’t get it. It’s not that it directly takes a foothold, it is the strangulation going on in the Asian economies and perception of a threat. If you aren’t over here right now, you have no ability to gauge the extent of it. Airlines flying around empty. People wearing masks, in most of Asia, especially the Chinese ancestry. Shops closed, streets empty, restaurants and bars have a much decreased business clientele. This is just beginning to have a direct Asian impact outside of China but when all the automakers and electronics and household goods manufacturers realise their Chinese made parts are no longer coming, ships are bypassing China and the coronavirus is still killing a 100+ per day it is having a Global impact. Apple just announced huge revenue shortfalls, wait until the rest of these International behemoths finally spill their beans.

SOOO well said. I am shocked at the amount of people who just don't get this.

Lets look just at the auto manufacturing you cite. China produces 9 times the amount of its closest competitor India in steel. China produced something like 928 million metric tons of steel in 2019. India produced a little over 100 million metric tons. My understanding is that has all come to a complete stop. What is that going to do to auto manufactures, or airplane manufacturers.

And that death toll? Utter poppycock! No one can get into a hospital in some of the larger Chinese provinces. So while they claim today there are only 1700 or so deaths, those are what is known. There is over 500 million in quarantine at home. The Chinese have put piles of dirt outside of some of these quarantine buildings to keep people from getting out. How is that going to impact the worker base in China? There could be 10s of thousands dead for all we know since we have no way to account for those locked in high rise buildings that they can't get out of. Some of those could have died from starvation at this point. What is that loss of worker base going to do to the economy's of the world? No one trained to build electronics like the apple Iphone or other China based cell phone manufacturers.

How about our debt to China? Their economy is trashed. Lots of people lost money in the China stock market. Those people are going to be looking to recover debts quickly to make up the losses. Not sure how they do that but with all that we owe China, it's going to impact our roaring economy. There are going to be job losses here in the states without the Chinese engine that drives our economy. So when those products are not being produced any more, we see a rise in costs in what is available. When that runs out we see people being put out of work (why have a sales person when you have nothing to sell, or a pilot when no one wants to fly). So then that impacts our economy here in the states. Huge crash in our economy. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together (unless they are in China, den dey dinner), mass hysteria!
This has the potential to be bad all around.

Gloating! What on earth about my post makes you say that I was gloating.

I've been here through SARS, The Global Economy Collaps, Followed by JAL's bankruptcy and the nationalists movement, the Labour Secretary that was hell bent into getting rid of all foreign pilots, the earthquake and tsunami followed by the Fukushima disaster, so if you think for one second that I give a 5 gallon bucket of camels urine being without a contract tomorrow, you're sadly mistaken.

But just to ease your mind a little, this is much of nothing! How many people are killed by influenza each year in the US? It is mostly about politics, our loads are nowhere near as low as we saw during SARS and just like that time, as soon as temperatures hit consistantly above 20c, this will go away.

Then you prophets of doom can look for the next "End of the world" scenario.

I've been told so many times over these last 13 years that this contract was coming to an end that now I'm actually looking forward to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah!

I've been hearing the "end of China" and "the bubble will burst" for two decades now, on the mean time they keep building infrastructure like nowhere else in the world and keep spending on R&D just shy of what the US is spending, well on the way on their space program to land a manned mission on the moon on the next few years!

But good luck with your theory

I'm not saying this is the end of China. I think they will survive this. As will nearly everyone else. In the meantime economies around the world are going to take HUGE hits, ours included. How much as been lost out of the Chinese stock market? A 3 or 4 month hit to the pipeline will damage a lot of businesses and people. But you're right once late spring hits this should all go away till next winter, hopefully by then we have a vaccine.

Hope your right. I just found out my friends work place in Tokyo has been shut down, one person tested positive, that person had been coming to work for several days prior with a very high fever.

The Corona "Stink Bug" isn't going to wipe-out the world but it is going to cause a hit to the "Global" economy in the short term... Think the USA governments actions speak much louder than words... After the first cases arrived into the USA and the CDC got a good look at it they promptly "closed" the door to inbound traffic from China...

The Japanese Handling has been soooo much in true J-fashion... Lots of fluff but no real beef... Lets look at the Japan -China traffic, tonnes of seats too and from... Albeit many empty but still free access... Diamond Princess today 542 hot out of 3700+, 88 hot yesterday but they are going to let people off the boat into the general populous today??? What are they thinking??? The crew who have been serving those in their cabins have tested "hot" and they are in common area living??? Japan will be the next "Hot Spot" with a 1000's of cases in the Tokyo metro area due to the high concentration and mass transit by the end of March... Hope I am wrong but just lookin at the way it's rolling that's what I see comin... J economy on the edge of recession will probably slide there with the Stink push... Will be interesting in the what happens with the 2020 games...

I am not forecasting total Doom for J-land... As with Dom I was here during the 2011 deal in Tohoku, in Sendai so have seen the J's drive on where as in the USA Companies would have cut their losses... However I do believe the Stink is going to Hit the Global economy due to the Supply chain and Japan is going to take a BIG hit due to mismanagement of the ABE admin...

Just my 10 yen...

Kampai

Thanks for the unnecessary lecture. It’s obvious to the casual observer, not living in China, Japan, or all of Asia for that matter that the Carona Virus will, and I do say again, will have a devastating outcome on world health, and the economy, if a miracle vaccine is not developed.

We shall see, but the only constant about the "Prophets of doom" is that their predictions never materialize, I've heard the devastation of the economy story way too many times before, just like with every other catastrophe that has happened around here over the years, 6 months down the line and nobody is talking about it! That's the exact thing that will happen to the latest media fueled end of the world super pandemic.
influenza killed 80,000 in the US in 2018, Why isn't this being targeted as the end of the world economy super pandemic? It's not in China, that's it, all political fuel... It's definitely something to be cautious about and the health organizations need to address it, I'm not trying to minimize it, but "The doom of the economy event" a little dramatic in my view!

You can come back in the summer of 2020 and make fun of me if you like, but I have a feeling that the laser pointer would have moved on to the next "The world is coming to an end" scenario by then.

Nobody thinks the world is ending but perhaps more and more aviation jobs. Cathay Pacific has 50% of its fleet on the ramp in Hong Kong along with 90% of the Hong Kong Airlines fleet. Hainan is bankrupt. Korean air carriers have cutback 50% and now Europe has cut back about 25-50% as their domestic air travel demand plummets. I am sure Japan is doing just fine though as you have been through many downturns. https://www.flightglobal.com/network...137033.article

I'm not minimizing the impact, most of the reduction in capacity you see now also happened during SARS and a couple of months later nobody was even mentioning the name SARS.
Same thing during the Fukushima disaster, capacity was cut down here dramatically, but the collapse of the Japanese economy and the devalue of the Yen that all experts were predicting never materialized.

And that is my point, all this reduction in capacity will stop just as fast as it started, the Chinese are at the starting line just waiting to travel again as soon as the media fueled panic dies down.
This is just a momentary thing not a catalyst of things to come, I believe that come summertime nobody will be talking about this!

Well, this post didn't age too well.

Then there are the "Pilot Hiring Boom Forever" posts....

I posted that 2 weeks ago! Let's revisit in a few months

Just curious... are you, The Dominican, suggesting that at any point in the future your predictions will age better? Cause this ****e is just getting started, unfortunately.

Any changes to your predictions? Go back and reread your early optimistic predictions when we all said this is much worse than a SARS event.

Man oh man. I specifically remember reading this post on February 29, while relaxing in the completely empty Pier lounge in HK, waiting for my Cathay flight to the States. I also remember seeing the acres of parked aircraft covering all of HKG's tarmac, and thinking "you know, this guy might be right. I should probably log onto my retirement accounts and just shift everything into cash." Well, I didn't. Instead I just ponied up to the bar for another Black Label.

Probably the most expensive drink I've ever had...

Same for me. I flew on a beautiful clear night around the same time from the Gulf of Mexico over Houston for DFW. Amongst the lights something was very odd just offshore. A huge number of ships were lit up and anchored offshore with no business to carry on with. I thought, "oh sheet, sell everything". Nope, wandered off on some other tangent after landing since my attention span is slightly better than my Yellow Lab's.

Did you at least have some dan dan mian?

Just had some of that in the lounge last week! That is some damn good soup.

You know, it's funny, I actually have a picture of the menu on my phone here and no, I had the wonton noodles (the other noodle choice). I should post a picture of the absolutely empty Wing lounge (memory failed me...it wasn't the Pier, it was the Wing First, since the Pier had already been shut due to Covid). Anyhow, the absolutely empty lounge, the fact that I got a cabana with no wait on a Friday night right before all the red-eyes departed, and most obviously the deserted HK terminal with the sobering sight of countless CX, HKA aircraft idled on the tarmac... should have given me a clue.

I remember disembarking from the flight I took that night, finally having arrived back in SFO and thinking "ok, I'm back in the States, I won't have to worry about all this Covid stuff anymore." Hah! How ignorant I was...

Three weeks later, my home city (SF) went into lockdown and we all know how it's gone since then.

I might have been a bit off...:)

. I give you credit for admitting overlooking the available data back then. Things aren’t getting better, they are getting worse, sadly.

A couple of places in China are beginning to accept applications again although I haven't heard of any actual hiring yet.
No wide body flying for the foreseeable future and the 737 and 320 contracts are expected to be way below in terms of T&C's than before.

The rest of Asia is in the tank, I don't think we will see any hiring of foreign pilots for at the very least another year or two.

The economy mess the pandemic will leave behind will be much worse than the pandemic itself.

I really though that at least in Japan, the resilience shown during other pandemics or economic fallout was going to show in this case as well, but for the first time in the 13 years I was there I've seen both ANA & JAL actually bunker down and scale back, when before they would forge ahead and even invest during downturns.

From October forward will be painful for many of us! Best of luck to everyone...

I hope you love China. Or CCP
 

https://hongkongfp.com/2021/04/28/hong-kong-lawmakers-approve-changes-to-immigration-law-prompting-fears-of-exit-bans/