Hi The Blue,The situation for experienced flight dispatchers is tough enough right now so for newly qualified ones you can imagine it is even tougher.I'm assuming from your post that you are from India and if you did attend the Jeppesen course in UAE you will find alot more of your compatriates, many with the same ideas as yourself.
Nothing wrong with that but what it does is make the playing field very competitive at an entry level as a lot of Indian dispatchers look towards to the Gulf for employment.
If you are looking at employment in the Gulf or UAE region then you can generally class those airlines into 3 groups.
Tier-1 such as Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, ARAMCO etc all hire either experienced people or promote from within (Saudia is a tier-1 carrier but only hires Saudis at that level). These airlines tend to be the best paid (although these days not as good as before) and they have nice benefits with, good training, accommodation allowances and wide route networks.
Tier-2 such as the lowcost carries like Jazeera, Air-Arabia, FlyDubai, Nas Air, Bahrain Air etc are somewhat easier to get into but still prefer some experience. They are short on benefits and generally dont pay as well as the tier-1 carriers but are typically OK to work for.
Tier-3 are the dirt bag airlines, normally reserved for Terminal-2 in Dubai or the smaller Emirates like Sharjah or in Saudi Arabia. They involve themselves in the 5hit left over that no one else wants and the people who run them are generally incompetent, inept and crooks of some sort. They will not pay you on time or in some cases, at all and they will expect you to accept that, they will not train you and they will not honour the contract that both you and they will sign. These airlines are dangerous and have shoddy maintenance on their aging crappy fleets. But they have no problems finding people to work for the pittance they pay, newly qualified dispatchers etc will swallow what they give them in order to get on the career ladder and hope they can move on to greener fields sooner rather that later.
Outside of these you have the VIP operators, they can range from good to absolutely terrible. The same goes for the trip planning companies, some are fine, some are rotten.
Beyond the Gulf you have S.E Asia and Far East, they tend to hire locally in general but from time to time, when the need arises, they can and do hire expats, it just doesn't happen on the scale that you would see in the Gulf.There is a lot of growth in the region right now and from what I am hearing, the talent just isn't there so it is possible that expat hiring may increase.
Some Aussie airlines have been known to sponsor work permits however it is not the norm and they need to justify the application with proof that they could not find a local.
EU/US...unless you already have the right to live and work in these countries then forget it, they don't give work permits to dispatchers. You'd need to have a Phd or some rare skill in order for them to do that.
There is work in Africa, it is poorly advertised generally and many of these outifts tend to be similar to the aformentioned tier 3 airlines mentioned above. The good ones like SAA, Ethiopian and Kenyan generally hire locals only.
Kingfisher is about to go bust and throw alot of inexprienced and experienced dispatchers alike out on the street. They're going to ruin the domestic job market in India for a while and will certainly even increase the competition for Gulf based jobs. Big headache for anyone in India trying to make a start in this career.
There is another less well known route that 99% of dispatchers don't even think of when it comes to looking for work but you would still need a year or so of experience in order to apply and I'm not posting it here because it will end up swamped. PM me if you are interested or have any questions.
D.O.G
Last edited by desertopsguy; 19th Jul 2012 at 14:41.