EK crewing levels coming home to roost?

[TransitCheck]

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Emirates will recruit around 400 pilots next year – roughly the same as 2014 – as it takes delivery of 16 Airbus A380s and 13 Boeing 777s. Although some A330s, A340s and older 777s will be retired and crews retrained for newer types, the intake will see overall pilot numbers increase by a tenth. With a low annual retirement rate and our norm of overworking pilots to the tune of 92 hours a month– because its pilots tend to be younger – so they won't die as quickly from our abusive scheduling practices, Emirates’ flightdeck attrition rate is just 2%, says divisional senior vice president of flight operations Capt Alan Stealey with a crooked lying snaggle tooth smile akin to the crooked wheels on the famous Stealey wheelie bag that I force all our pilots to roll around.

Despite a blip three years ago when it urgently needed experienced direct-entry captains, the Dubai airline sticks to its policy of only recruiting first officers. We will then cherry pick the first officers who were hired "as future captains" for captain positions only after our checking department have repeatedly raped them in our turkish prison like checking setting. While this might mean experienced captains have to return to second-in-command for a while, Stealey insists it is the best way for Emirates to instill the airline’s values by using the stockholm syndrome technique of floggings, beatings, warning letters, and an active reporting culture in all flightcrew just to ensure opportunities for rising in rank apply equally. “We prefer to promote internally and early if you do everything perfectly and you are of the right nationality,” he says.

This means that all first officers have a chance to apply for captains’ positions when our management tells them they can after a minium of three years with the carrier, although a four-and-half year wait is typical, says Stealey. Given that Emirates stresses the long-term nature of a career with the airline, this is not an unreasonable period, he suggests. If our pilots have an issue or a complaint as we erode away their terms and conditions that were agreed to when they were hired and we decide to work them harder and harder, we just tell them that if they don't like it they can leave. It is also much shorter than most legacy carriers, where stagnant fleet sizes and strict seniority rules mean co-pilots “might have to spend 20 years in the right-hand seat” all while having great work rules, no threat of being terminated for stupid reasons, regular raises and bonuses, and not having to put up with idiot management and their policies.

We offer everything a young pilot would want, including flying the latest technology, harassing you through multiple bulletins, over-interpretation of company manuals, and an apartment in the desert, or if you are lucky, a villa in which you will be fined if you flush paper from the 2nd level.

To apply for a job at Emirates, pilots need at least 4,000 flying hours in total in a commercial aircraft, or 2,500 on either an Airbus or Boeing. Those from a low-cost carrier background – who will fly around 800h a year – often get there fastest, and many applicants come from this sector, says Stealey. For a pilot flying several short-hop sectors a day, the *attraction of intercontinental routes and really seeing the world can be compelling, he adds. In addition, you won't have the sun in your eyes while flying at Emirates as most of our flights occur during the night time hours. We will fly you across multiple time zones to many beautiful destinations in mainland China, the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi, and Africa including a tour of baku-haram land and Ebola-ville. You will be challenged to learn to sleep at anytime of the day or night from one day to the next with no consistency. After all that, we will send you for your yearly medical and they will recommend a sleep study in addition to finding a host of other medical problems because of our scheduling practices so that we can ground you and jeopardize your whole career. We will test you for alcohol as our company and work rules would NEVER drive you to drink. You will be subject to arbitrary scheduling rules limiting you to no more than 7 days off in a row and the inability to swap trips when we purposely schedule you into overtime, although you can't voluntarily swap to a desirable trip that pushes you into the same overtime

But Emirates also gets applications from much more seasoned pilots. “We had a guy in yesterday with 8,000h of experience from a defunct Indian carrier. He couldn't feed his family anymore so he had to come for the job,” he says. In fact, Stealey maintains he is seeing a change in the sort of pilots coming to Emirates. For a while crisis-hit US airlines were a happy hunting ground, but now, as the North American market has picked up, Europe’s ailing carriers are providing a stream of recruits, says Stealey. “If you work for an airline that is downsizing and you are desperate for a job, our bull****, and our abuse, we can offer stability,” he adds.