Most of the ex-pat captains I know here in SQ (and I know a lot of them) couldn’t even be bothered making an application to EK. Those who half-heartedly did so soon lost interest when the novelty of a possible escape vehicle from SQ had worn off. Reason? You bet – the very poor package offered by EK.
Another interesting development, for all you bean-counting airline managing “experts” out there, is that to a man (remember, no girls allowed here) they consider that EK is past it and is now run by the same brand of low caliber, main chance, deadbeat management as SIA, who don’t give a hoot about the troops, are incapable of giving any kind of lead other than that spelt out in the Boys Big Book of Leadership and who are utterly perplexed by the concept of trust and loyalty engendered in the masses by a management’s consistent and exemplary behavior, but who instead, look merely to arrange the death of the industry by a thousand salami cuts thus maintaining a self styled orthodoxy in the modern creed of airline management.
Even more novel is that those senior captains in a financial position to consider it are now looking to leave the industry altogether, before age sixty, rather than continue a working life of loathing and resentment towards their employers (with the corollary flight safety implications) as represented by their chiseling, weasel wordsmith, wunderkind management satraps and these industry veterans would certainly never entertain the idea, just for the sake of continued flying, of jumping from the SQ frying pan to the fire that a move to EK would represent.