What would improve EK?

[bigmountain]

I don't think a pay rise will solve the problem for those people who are affected. It may act as a diversion but ultimately there has to be a realization that the rate Emirates is growing , management is is paying lip service to Safety and Training, while going full throttle with its commercial agenda. All commercial decisions are based on the "acceptable risk" not realizing that all the their great marketing and branding will go down the tubes if Emirates has major accident or incident.

What ever safety culture remains, is slowly eroding at the expense of optimizing the operation. This includes reducing the number of days spent being trained at the Aviation College and more weight given to "home study" and the crew signing an acknowledgement that the course has been undertaken. ("tick in the box") This course of action has partly been taken due to shortage of Trg Personnel including Ground Instructors and Instructor Pilots. and also shortage of classrooms. Plus it releases line crew to fly more instead spending spending precious time at refreshers . Same story is with CRM courses and refresher courses. The Initial 3 dayCRM course conducted outside Dubai in Hatta has long been phased out and the refresher course usually conducted over a day will now be incorported during the recurrent PPC and the candidate will have deemed to have undergone " a crm refresher" and another "tick in the box " in fulfilling another GCAA requirement.

The safety culture and training environment is slowly but surely playing second fiddle to Emirates higher managements crusade against high costs and a constant pressure on middle managers to deliver the goods at a lower cost. No one is man enough to put their foot down and put the brakes on the deteorating safety culture which is ultimately transalating to miimal training due to shortage of experienced training staff including TRg captains. This is partly due to the poor package( salary as well a life style) being offered to those already in the Training departrment. In experienced staff are being forced to undertake duties that they would normally be carried out by more senior TRE.( Type Rating Examiners) Due to shortage of Instructors junior Type Rating Instructors (TRI)are conducting upgrade loft sessions and TRI s also conducting initial flights with trainees. These duties were normally conducted by a TRE who has a wealth of experience as an Instructor and examiner on the aircraft type. This not only provided a higher level of safety but also had a greater possibility of imparting their wealth of experience.
Due the shortsightedness of the management and the poor package offered to its Trg Staff , the Trg department has not been able to attract experienced Captains to join and share their experience, instead Captswith only 6 months experience are being offered positions in the Trg department. There is no doubt that these junior Capts conduct themselves well, but do deserve more time to conslidate on the line before joining the Trg department.
Communications between the mangement and the line is another reason morale is low. This is a serious issue and needs to be addressed. A fleet update by the SVP ops is insufficient. Regular meetings taking into confidence and being more transparent in dealings with the Pilot group is the need of the hour. Issues need to tackled and answers given and grievences addressed.

The issue is serious enough for some one who is expected to be with Emirates long term. However SVP ops are aware that their role with Emirates has a limited time span and it is their best interest is to toe the offical line while talking about safety standards while continually chipping at cost reductions that will have major negative repurcussions on the training and safety culture when they have long gone.
With high fuel cost and ticket prices in real terms going down , we all realize that its is struggle to manage the business profitably. Emirates management seeme to be struggling a bit too hard in the cost cutting area.

BM