This forum post from r/flying highlights a recurring frustration among low-time and career-transitioning pilots: the opacity of airline hiring pipelines, particularly at carriers based outside North America and Europe. HK Express, the Hong Kong-based low-cost carrier owned by Cathay Pacific Group, has maintained a consistent presence on job boards seeking Second Officers, yet the original poster describes submitting multiple applications across 2024 and 2025 without receiving any response, despite meeting the airline's stated requirements. This isn't an isolated complaint—it reflects a broader pattern where airlines keep postings perpetually "open" to build applicant pools or satisfy visa/immigration sponsorship documentation requirements, without necessarily processing every application in a timely or transparent manner.
For working pilots and those pursuing airline careers, this thread underscores several practical realities of the modern hiring landscape. First, Asia-Pacific carriers often have hiring cycles and criteria that are less publicly documented than their U.S. Part 121 counterparts, where seniority lists, union contracts, and hiring bar data (via resources like Airline Pilot Central) provide much greater visibility into application-to-interview timelines. Second-Officer or cadet-style roles at carriers like HK Express typically target pilots building hours toward a First Officer upgrade, often under multi-crew pilot license (MPL) frameworks or ab-initio programs, which can have different sourcing pathways (cadet programs, local flight schools, or direct-entry hiring) that aren't always obvious from a standard online application. Applicants without an existing network, agency representation, or a pathway through an approved training partner may find their applications essentially invisible in the system, even when technically qualified.
This matters to the broader pilot community because it illustrates the ongoing global disparity in airline recruiting transparency, especially post-pandemic as international carriers rebuild capacity and crew pipelines amid uneven recovery timelines in Asia relative to North America and the Middle East. Hong Kong's aviation sector faced prolonged disruption from strict COVID-19 quarantine policies longer than most regions, and carriers like HK Express and Cathay Pacific have been rebuilding crew complements gradually, sometimes prioritizing internal transfers, cadet program graduates, or pilots with existing Hong Kong work authorization over cold-call international applicants. For expatriate or foreign-national applicants, work visa sponsorship costs and administrative burden may quietly deprioritize their applications even when postings remain publicly active.
More broadly, this thread reflects a pattern seen industry-wide: applicant ghosting has become a persistent complaint across both legacy and low-cost carriers globally, feeding a growing reliance on pilot forums, recruiting agencies, and informal networks to get real signal on hiring activity versus what job postings suggest. For pilots building time toward airline careers—particularly those eyeing overseas First Officer or Second Officer seats as a stepping stone—the practical takeaway is to supplement direct applications with networking through current employees, type-specific Facebook groups, or agencies with established relationships with the carrier, since HR departments at large international airlines often deprioritize unsolicited applications in favor of warmer, referral-driven candidates. This also serves as a reminder for applicants to verify whether a "perpetually open" posting reflects active recruiting or a standing requisition used mainly for pipeline-building purposes.