I hope that the following allows you to make an informed decision. It is unemotional and factual (a first on PPRuNe??!)
I make about $8500 a month, that includes around $1300 overtime. I fly over 90 hours a month on Ultra Long Haul routes and get 8 days off, plus about 3 rest days a month. But I am a Captain.
An FO would make about $5500 including $1000 overtime.
But the overtime is not guaranteed, it varies from month to month. What is absolutel certain and factual, is that under the
old credit scheme, I would be making more money.
So basically, you can say that a Captain is on about $7000-$8000 and an FO on $4500 - $5500.
What is also certain is that the overtime varies from fleet to fleet. Airbus A340 guys are getting it, B777 are not. But then they fly less, so I think it is a fair system.
I pay 5% (mandatory) and the company pays 10% of my monthly salary into an offshore provident fund, available as a cash lump at teh end of my time here. During the last six months, the equity based investment rose just 0.96%. The cash would have done better at the bank!
The company pay for my medicals and I have what I consider to be excellent medical benefits. But I have yet to really use them, so the fact that it is an
excellent scheme is subjective.
I am very happy overall, I have a nice life here, but the day to day Dubai stuff wears me down, so I have to go back to Europe every so often to chill out and relax in the countryside where there is no traffic, noise or polution.
But I have to ask the company if I can leave Dubai on my days off. ALthough I have never been told no, others have.
Communication between the management and crew is at an all time low. There is no regular update on the present state of teh business, on the deliveries, on anything. We used to be informed regularly about what was going on in the airline and we used to be allowed to comment on it. Now there is a brick wall between the two groups and there is no evidence at all that the management care about this. After all, if there is no communication to be done, that is one less task that they need to do.
I consider myself quite senior within the airline yet I have not had peak leave for two years now and thi syear, the secondary leave allocation was taken within minutes of teh bids opening up on the system. Not near a computer when it was opened up? Tough. I am now owed 24 days by the company, yet cannot take them this leave year. I had already carried 10 over from last year.
The morale is at an all time low, despite what others may have said. This makes the day to day aspect of going to work more and more difficult to bear.
The type of flying that we do is extremely debilitating. Massive jumps in time zones and bad rostering make a 12 hour time zone change within six days very realistic; That is a fact, I do it often enough and it is painful and very fatiguing.
The cabin crew are treated appalingly (see the thread relating to security -
here)
If you asked me would I come here knowing what I know now, then I would have to say no, I wouldn't. Why? The grass is always greener and I was attracted by the glitz and gloss of the airline and Dubai. What I have
discovered is that the airline are not as caring as they purport to be. Notwithstanding special cases where the staff have been incredible well treated (mostly medical cases etc.) the airline has become too big to really take a caring attitude towards the staff, especially the cabin and flight crew. Dubai itself is a massive environmental disaster in the making. The once clear blue Gulf waters are murky and the air is decidedly not fresh.
I hope that the above allows you to make that informed decision. Should you decide to join, then you would have had access to more information than ever regarding the
real Emirates and the actual conditions of working here. However, despite all of the above, somebody did tell me once that Emirates was probably the best of a bad industry. Now there's food for thought!
Gulf Nomad is quite right when he says that the details contained here on this forum do not constitute the majority's opinion. However, I firmly believe that there is enough here to make that informed decision. Good luck in your career and safe flying wherever you decide to go.
As a post script, a friend of mine in Italy recomended that I buy a book, it's by a guy called Robin Sharma and is called The Monk That Sold His Ferrari. You are lucky, you don't have to buy it to get the gist of the tale:
Do not go chasing the dollar, money is not everything!! Keep your health, your family bonds, your friendships and your spirituality, the rest will come to you!