The rot set in for me, when was it? - three of four years ago now when all EK staff got a 5% pay rise. Except the pilots, who got their CONTRACTUAL 3% annual increment and a 2% pay rise.
And we all copped it sweet, encouraging them to tighten the screws further and further, which they've done, and continue to do.
Anyone who cared to could look back through my posts on this site and will have found me one of the company defenders up until then. With that one totally cynical slieght of hand, they lost me, and since then, by their actions, they've continued to lose me more and more.
Am I the only captain in the airline who feels really - and I mean REALLY - uncomfortable at the thought of taking my mandatory rest in the (far) aft torpedo tube with some of our latest recruits manning the fort a very long way away from where I am forced to go? EK has had some potentially distrastrous incidents in the past, and on every occasion to date, the company has been extremely lucky in having someone on the flight deck who's rescued the situation with flying skills over and above what the company seems to expect from us now with their utterly ridiculous "automation always" policy. In my opinion, it's just a matter of time and we'll see an EK tail on page 1 of the world's newspapers for all the wrong reasons.