Scratch underneath the surface of this news and we still see an industry in the doldrums and EK struggling to piece together any meaningful schedule, which is reflected in the 777 fleet resembling more of an ad hoc charter operation than an airline. It therefore makes no logical sense to make the announcement yesterday and especially when forced unpaid leave was recently announced for our A380 colleagues.
Friends in the national carrier said they had heard that their reinstatement to 90% was thanks to a directive from the government, due to the prospect of so many being perilously close to being unable to manage outstanding debt repayments. The banking sector in the UAE is overwhelmed with the volume of expats leaving and the number that will likely default out of choice or necessity, after agreeing to service their debt after returning home. Either the same is the case at EK and they have been instructed to boost salaries or it is a pure
PR exercise to try and paint a unrealistic and overly bullish picture of how EK is weathering the crisis.
I hate to be pessimistic here but I can’t help but feel that we will see more periods of forced unpaid leave being metered out on a selective basis to help add some balance to the increase in salary costs. Should the company wish to trim numbers further, prolonged unpaid leave can achieve this by forcing people to resign and the company benefits by avoiding any fresh headlines reaching the media of more redundancies.
For those remaining, any sense of relief could be rather premature at this stage for some and any feelings of further resentment from those leaving, maybe misplaced for now. EK is like any other Arab airline I have worked for in the past, in that they will not hesitate to run a bus under their expat staff to safeguard their reputation and overall image to the outside world. Perhaps the key is already in the ignition?