Those considering Emirates
I am writing this explaining all the aspects of Emirates that you will not hear from the company for those of you considering Emirates as a pilot. First I will tell you about Emirates and what they do and don’t do then I will tell you about Dubai that you might not be aware of.
I joined Emirates in the neighborhood of a year ago and did not do my homework about the airline or the city like I should have and now I regret it big time. There, that is my disclosure. I was a pilot at a world class carrier that had some financial trouble so I decided to leave. Emirates seemed like a good opportunity at the time and in many regards it is but not if you come from a top-tier airline.
Emirates does not have many things that a typical airline would have. We have no vacation pay, no sick pay, no trip credit, no duty credit, no minimum day, and no pension. Unions are outlawed and the government agency that is supposed to monitor the airline is non-existent. In other words whatever the management wants the airline gets, the pilots be dammed. We have a bidding system on paper but it does not work very well. We are not allowed to transfer aircraft and of course there is only one crew base which is Dubai.
We as pilots get 42 days vacation a year. That is good especially where I come from. The problem is trying to use the vacation when you want it. For two summers now I have not received any summer leave and we all know how hot Dubai gets in the summer. Leave is suppose to be rotated so it would make sense if you did not get summer leave this year you should get it next summer. Fat chance.
Also you can only use three weeks vacation in a row. That is not so bad but if you only use 7 days to 10 days vacation in a month you still work a full flying month and you just burned 7-10 days vacation from you bank. 42 days goes fast that way.
There is no sick pay. You call in sick for a trip and not only do you not get paid for it they can schedule you another trip even on your days off. If you call in sick for a four day trip and you are better after two days you can count on having two days of garbage as a pay back. Crew scheduling remembers everything and writes it all down on your personal page.
There is no duty regs or trip credit. This is not so much a problem at Emirates because they fly efficient patterns. But on the rare occasion where you are laying over for three days in TPI, ACC, KUL, YYZ, or SIN you are not getting paid for it. You only get paid for what you fly and for the most part that is the only way to get paid. We don’t get paid for our own simulator which is twice a year but we do get deadhead pay which we hardly ever do.
If we do a gulf sector that is very short we only get what we fly. So a DOH or BAH trip is only worth 1:50. Most airlines have a 4 –5 hour minimum day but not at Emirates. I must admit most of the flying goes over the 5 hour flying day but now with the wonderful bidding system you can count on a lot more short turns. More on that latter.
We have a retirement program here but it is not very good. My account has not built up very much but you hear of pilots flying here for 10 years and only having $125,000 or so. A close personal friend of mine has been here 6 years and has $67,000. I know the management wanna bees will come out and say there is much bigger but it is not anything what a proper pension should be. After you cash it in you will be lucky to put a down payment on a house. We need more for retirement but of course management is not listening to the pilots but then again they never listen to us.
Emirates is in desperate need of a union. As I mentioned earlier management just does not listen to the pilots. They do whatever they want whenever they want. We have absolutely no say. It is very frustrating to say the least. I know some pilots will say that they are quite happy not having a union here but they are the ones that have probably jumped the seniority list at some point in their career or have been the beneficiary of some management decision.
There is no FAA or CAA here and you can tell from the onset. When we set the brakes after a pattern we are off duty. They did this (because they can) so they can get some long turn arounds in under the duty limit. I understand we use to get 30 mins after brakes set but they did away with this provision for their benefit and so they could do a lot more of very long turn arounds with just two pilots.
We fly a lot of night flying. Not just at night but in the middle of the night. A lot of our patterns leave at 2am and fly all night and get back to Dubai at 6 in the morning a day later. That just kills me. Some pilots adjust but not me. This is something that I did not know and did not come across in my limited research. My bad big time!
Also we fly some long legs with only two pilots in the middle of the night. We go to Beijing and Seoul and leave with two pilots at 2am and fly across the Himalayas. That is just not safe. Try staying awake. It is painful most times and probably has taken years if not decades off my life. No one outside the airline knows this but there is a lot of single pilot flying going on here. One pilot sleeps while the other pilot tries and stays awake and then the roles are reversed. One pilot manning the ship at a time.
The management in their infinite wisdom just messed with the bidding system again. They now state that we can only have 14 days off a month. Why? Who knows the real reason but I am sure jealousy is high up on the list. Also they don’t like commuters and they don’t like for the pilots to have too much time off. They rather we all be tired and crabby so we will leave the airline or be dead. This has screwed up a lot of pilots way of life.
The main determent here is the Direct Entry Captain program. I know Emirates had it before I joined but I did not realize how much it hurts an airline. When it comes to upgrade they can easily say we are going to hire DECs and you just have to wait. A union would come in handy here to stop this program but that will never happen. Pilots on the Airbus are having to wait over a year and a half for their upgrade because some narrow body captain who never has flown outside Europe or the States is coming in and upgrading before them. There are no good airlines in the world that don’t respect seniority. Emirates does not respect seniority. It is a complete slap in the face to the hard working first officers of this airline what the company is doing to us.
Dubai is pretty much a nightmare to get anything done in. The traffic is obscene and bottlenecks everyday in most parts of the city. Try and get something done and it takes you four times as long to get there as it should.
Then you have the idiot drivers. I will leave the nationalities aside but you just can’t believe some of the stunts they pull. You just pray you don’t come across any of them on your daily travels.
God forbid if you get into an accident with any of them. It is your word against theirs and the cops speak Arabic. Everything written is in Arabic and you have no idea what is going on. I hope it does not happen to anyone here but it does everyday and it sucks.
There is no customer service to speak of. Try and return some item that you don’t want or is the wrong size. It can be done but is often an Act of God.
Every store has a security guard posted all through the store. Sometimes they even follow you. At least they do to me, must be because I look suspicious but others have said the same thing. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy all over.
Then there is the runaway inflation in Dubai. Officially it is listed at 12% a year but everyone knows that is a farce. Many items are not included in the official listings and super markets are almost at the point of listing their items in pencil so they can change the prices everyday. Don’t get me wrong it is not Zimbabwe yet but it very frustrating at the same time. Quality of life has gone way done just in the last 6 months not to mention the last 15 months. I can’t imagine what the last 10 years has brought.
Schools, food, rents, water, and almost every item has jumped considerably. The profit share and the pay raises don’t even come close to keeping up with inflation. In just a year I am worse off then when I joined. It just is not worth it and like I said I made a big mistake in coming to Emirates. This memo is to the pilots thinking about coming to Dubai and Emirates so they can think long and hard about such a career move. There are some positives but there are a lot of negatives as well. Do you homework and see what is best for you and your family. Ask your friends how many of them have sent their wives and children back home because of the ills of Dubai. Ask if their wife was on some type of medication. A vast majority of Emirates wives living in Dubai are, after all everyone wants to seem “happy.” Ask the pilots if they are walking zombies because of all the night flying we do. Ask them again if they regret coming. Then ask them from what airline they came from before Emirates to get an accurate picture. Ask ask and ask again. Get the information not from the company but from people you know and make sure they are telling you the truth. In other words don’t ask a management pilot or someone who came from a third tier airline. Emirates is not for everyone but if you do deciede to come, Keep Recovering! and good luck.