Gawd. No wonder people are getting pissed off waiting and going to Etihad.
It sounds like Emirates dont know for certain themselves what they are doing or when they are doing it and nothing official has been decided yet but they have a few ideas being thrown around. Hence the conflicting information we are all getting from them.
Time will tell I suppose. They gotta start recruiting at some point so suppose we just gotta keep waiting and think of it as a good thing: loads of time to prepare and build up any areas we're lacking in (im volunteering at a soup kitchen cos I havent done hospitality work for a couple of years, I met someone online who is grateful of the delay cos it has given her time to get her teeth fixed and I know of someone else who is using the time to take a sign language course - bit random but things like that are always an advantage to an airline)
So u never know, it might be a blessing in disguise for a lot of people.