You may be right Red Dragon, and I think Serco may have painted themselves into a corner by encouraging only single mostly short term people to come, but for us that are here with no kids at school, it was a very big win.
The argument of whether the setup we have here now is fair or not is a difficult one. On one hand the single guys say that since they work just as hard and work just as much traffic as a married guy with kids, he deserves the same amount of money. On the other hand the guys with kids say that because it's always been the way, education should be paid for by the company above and beyond the salary they get. Probably the best compromise would have been that regardless of family situation all guys got the same accomodation and same salary, and still education was paid for by the company. But that wasn't the direction they chose to go in, which sucked for the long term guys here with kids in school.
Bottom line now is that if you are coming to the Gulf as an Area controller, if you have school age kids, Bahrain is the best option, and if you are a guy with no school age kids, Abu Dhabi or Muscat is the best option. Will be interesting to see in a couple of years, what the turnover of controllers is here. A lot of new guys here now, but the big question is will any of them stay beyond 2 or 3 years, like most of the family guys have (who more often stay 5 years plus, cos their kids are in school). Also with education costs going up by 15 to 20 % annually here, and family size accomodation going up in rent by more than that, it will be increasingly difficult for married guys with kids to stay here, even if they wanted to.
Interesting times ahead!
Last edited by AirNoServicesAustralia; 8th Sep 2006 at 12:17.