You're hearing from more U.S. pilots lately because we are starting to look around the world for opportunity. (We get criticized for being to parochial by not branching out in the world and get criticized when we do...
) I, personally, am intrigued by the opportunities in the Gulf but can't just hop on a plane to go explore.
Here's a question: What do you do on your time off when the "toy phase" wears off (other than writing on pprune)?
I know it's tough to go standby on EK. (It's tough to go standby on AA, too.) Is it impossible to get on a plane to somewhere decent? Do some of the European "vacation" airlines fly to DXB so you could get up to Europe relatively inexpensively?
I will say that the "negative tone" here is a little daunting initially, but it's no different than the American Airlines' pilot message board--actually, it's quite a bit more critical than pprune.
Having been a consistent reader here for a while, I appreciate the posts on life at EK. I know some who have left EK and returned to the U.S. were probably expecting it to be the land of milk and honey and were bitterly disappointed upon finding it's not.
I don't believe there are any really outstanding jobs out there. You get good T & C's and there's no stability. Good stability and your quality of life suffers.
I guess the wife and I need to make a trek to the desert and see for ourselves. TC