All that glitters is not necessarily gold!
The new villas you refer to are nice looking bricks and mortar, as long as you are lucky enough to get 'the' house without the damp. Nice if you have no kids but if you have small ones there is no place for them to play unless you are prepared to take them someplace in a car. The street isn't an option, dangerous driving or a building site. Of course, if your 4 year old has just had a tantrum....
The new utilities allowance is a joke and if it is anything like the car loan won't rise for the next 10 years. Right now in Jumeriah, 80k DH/year would rent a small 3 bed appartment and the other 15k would cover the utilities. If you are prepared to go off into the GAFA you might get something better.
Dubai offers lots of opportunities for the kids from watersports to ice skating. It is a great place to bring up kids in an outdoor lifestyle with nice weather and a multicultural environment. But there are some drawbacks. Despite what you might be told, crime does exist, it is just not publicised. Several Emirates Villas have been broken into over the last year, some more than once, the rumour is that it is drug related crime. We are not talking about crime on the same scale as other major cities around the world but Dubai is not a totally crime free environment.
Some of the older folks complain that the kids don't get to live in the real world and lots of familys ship them off to the home country to get streetwise when they reach their teens. A night stop in Dhaka can have the same effect.
Primary eduacation actually costs between 18 and about 25,000Dh in the Brit system but much more in the US system. Emirates cover about 19k. The schools are good!
The snag is getting your kids into the schools. They are trying to keep the class sizes down to about 20 but with little success. The order of precedent for entry to JESS, JPS etc goes something like: Older sibling in the school, British Passport, Company debenture, the rest of us.
In the past the companies just bought up more debentures to ensure that their employees kids got in. I understand that the debenture places have dried up. There are some other schools available but the locations generally suck. I know someone who has to send their kids to Sharjah. Were I coming to the interview again, I would ask if there are any school places available for my kids, and where, and whether or not there are any plans for pay to stay even vaguely in line with inflation. If not, family life could start to become a bind and if the family isn't happy....
Don't count on saving anything whilst you are an F/O and consider carefully the fringe benefits that your company offers you. Emirates provident fund is all that is available for the retirees unless they make there own arrangements. It has performed dreadfully (some guys have lost $100k from the fund) in line with the stock market over the last year. There are a lot of companies around the world that still pay final salary pensions for an employees modest 5% contribution. To achieve the same sort of deal here you will have to contribute a significantly larger proportion of your salary (15%ish?). (I read that the some of the UK charters are now paying 1.6%/year of service final salary pension, which if you leave as a training captain is big money for your retirement)
At Emirates, on a good month you will work harder than most other flag carrier long haul airlines but less than short haul or charter. If you are top bid you'll get a decent roster, if you are bottom you'll get a few nice trips to Bombay. C'est la vie! Not bad though. When you make the exulted rank of TCI/TCE they will squeeze every last drop out of you. Just like most places, profits are maximised by running lean on expensive personnel and paying them the least that can be gotten away with. Pilot representation doesn't happen, the only way to vote is with your feet.
The pay has been documented elsewhere, suffice to say that the package is eroding big time in real terms, which is not a good precedent and sucks if the only reason that you want to come to Dubai is for the money.
Hope that helps. Not trying to appear too negative, just a little more balanced. There are lots of good things about living in Dubai but also a few negatives that are sometimes glossed over. Dubai is very good at selling itself and so are Emirates. When folks first arrive everything glitters, nice shiny aircraft etc, and then the truth sinks in. As long as you are not just after cash you'll be ok, but financially at retirement even european charter airlines might offer a better long term deal. There are better places to work but also a lot worse; just make sure you take everything into account before making the leap.
Ghost
[This message has been edited by Ghostflyer (edited 02 June 2001).]