Thoughts about Emirates
There are a lot of pilots thinking of Emirates as an airline to fly for. About a year ago I wrote part 1 for pilots from my home country considering the move. This is presented as is with no corrections (which are always possible due to hind-sight) part 2 is to allow present conditions and considerations to be part of your decision making process.
Part 1
Bottom line - it is really comforting to work for a company that has profit as it's primary objective. This is not to say that political interference, racial representation objectives, incompetent management and petty preferences are not part of the company's identity. Just that if a company wants to make a profit then the rest by default have a lower and sometimes almost non-existant part to play.
Emirates is a great company to work for if you are young (starting out in your flying career), single or married with no kids. Anything else and you are setting yourself up for heartache.
Cost. It is really expensive to live in Dubai with a family. For instance, In 7 years our monthly grocery budget has climbed from AED2500/month to AED6500/month. This over a period in which our salaries have climbed in low single digit percentages per year or not at all in some years. Over the same period, the Education Support Allowance(ESU) has been essentially stagnant, while the schools have hiked their prices from 5 to 15% every year. You will contribute substantially to your kids education every year. It is only going to get worse. Since Dubai has won the EXPO 2020, everything from property prices to parking fees is going up. As it is, there is no tax but you pay for everything. When you pay a parking fine you also get to pay a "Knowledge Fee" and a "Facilitation Fee" for the privilege of settling your fine (Those terms are paraphrased but the item on the fine invoice amounts to those things). These "taxes" are going up and when you query it, the person behind the counter grins and says "EXPO 2020!". Do not come here with debts back home and then try to live on a co-pilot's salary. This is really NB! I don't know how to emphasise this enough. Oh and forget about Profit Share ever being a part of this company's remuneration process again.
Education. To start with, getting more expensive as stated. Additionally, you have to book a place for your kid as soon as they are born (which booking you pay for). In fact you pay every time you just put your kids name on a waiting list, which is not refunded. The British System has kids starting school at about 3, legally required from FS1 (about 5). But if you do not let them start at 3, the schools will tell you that there is no guarantee that their place will be available when they get to 5. The catch is that Emirates only pays the ESU from FS1. So you will pay from AED 20K to 40K per year per kid until they are 5. From then on you will top up the shortfall which can be substantial especially if you have your kids in a GEMS school (for profit, look it up on the web). The non-profit schools are better, but not much and there are essentially only 3 good schools; JESS, DESC and DC (again, look them up). You are virtually guaranteed that there will not be place in these 3 as people are flooding into DXB again. GEMS is not bad but the owner only wants money and they have some very questionable ethical and educational principles. For the most part people are happy though. Wellington is probably the most subscribed. Most important here - school is one of the 3 most important aspects of family life in DXB. And you are GOING to battle with it, especially from the point of view of housing.
Housing. Not enough and not always in a good place. The 2nd is luck of the draw and not fair to complain about. But, it does play a big part in which school you would like your kids to go to and since schools are a big problem, the house location becomes a big issue. The biggest issue is that there is not enough and EK always has a battle to mollify new joiners on housing. This is the 2nd important aspect of family life in Dubai and it is not easily rationalised. If you are lucky, you will be located in a large development not unlike the gated communities in the rest of the world. They give your family a community and lots of support, more so if you are located with the rest of the chaps you join with. You could be spread over the whole city though as complexes are not always ready at the time you may join and then temp accom or vacated units or any variation in between comes into the picture. And EK will NOT let you change and does NOT let you participate in the process. There are exceptions as always, but you will fight for years to create an opportunity for an exception.
Medical. Not as good as it was and getting worse. Substantial waiting to get family to EK Clinic, somewhat alleviated by family being allowed to go direct to 3rd party service providers without reference. But the company spends a lot on medical and all they are doing to fix that problem is cutting back on benefits, not the reason why people are getting sick. Most pilots supplement with a form of top-up insurance. There are stories (most unsubstantiated) about EK cutting off support after (6 months - number varies) for critical illness (Cancer), but they are difficult to verify. Most important, the company has grown but the pool of doctors and dentists and support staff has shrunk. Medical is problematic.
Promotion. This is the 3rd important aspect of life in DXB. Once you have a command, life becomes affordable in DXB - sort of. The problem is that this is so unpredictable. There is an average time, something like 4.5 years at the moment. But you should expect closer to 8-10 years from now on. In broad terms, since the average age is so low, the pilot pool needs to double before you get your command (no retirements). At the moment there are 3600. That means you will get your command when there are 7200 pilots in EK. In practice, because of growth, attrition and some retirements you can subtract about 20% off that number and you will get your command when there are 5800 to 6000 pilots. That is still a growth of up to 3500 required. Thats a minimum of 5 years at 700 per year which has never happened. Then you have economic slowdowns, A380 wings that are cracked and need to be replaced, runway closures for 3 months, new aircraft only replacing retired aircraft and you have issues from short to long duration which mean that that 5 years will only increase. One of the biggest at the moment is that new joiners on the old A330/340 fleet will have to wait for the fleet to die (no earlier than 2017) before accumulating the required EK time (not EK type) for command on an appropriate fleet. If you are lucky you will go direct to the 380 or 777 but at the moment they are taking new joiners in on the 330/340 fleet.
There are many other issues which will become too demoralising to elaborate on. Emiritization (government wide program to put Emiratis into every post and position in the country - a big one at the moment and EK is a major part of this program). Class of citizenship (you are a second class citizen and if something goes wrong with your career you are out of the country - NB for your family because if you loose your job at home your family carries on as normal but not here!). Flying Roster, (there are quoted numbers of pilots off on long term sick leave that defy belief so I won't quote them - but they [management] do not know, nor do they want to know, what the EK type of flying does to you). Driving on DXB roads (in some ways better than SA since there is no aggression but the style is scary - take the Mumbai style [since they are the majority population here] which is fine if you're in Mumbai where the speed never goes above 30kph, relocate to a place with 7 lane highways and speeds from 180 in the far left to 20 in the far right and figure it out for yourself). Family in DXB for prolonged periods as your family does not escape like you do (the sand gets a bit much eventually and I wont even touch on the temperature although since you live in aircon all summer that does not affect as much but that in itself is a problem if you like the Chevrolet life in SA). Leave (which for some has always worked perfectly and others has never worked and the company often uses leave to manage costs). Career advancement (only works as long as it works for the company - when they don't need you, you are out of the post. Only ever budget on your basic salary!
As always, the positives will be shorter since there are many and you will want to rationalise on these points anyway so I wont embellish too much.
Company finances. Good to work for a stable, growing company with lots of money. Stated above.
New aircraft and even newer ones coming for the next 10 years or more. B777X and lots more 380's (and possibly/probably the A350). We all want to fly the biggest and newest.
Opportunities for the kids at school. My kids have gone to many places in the world on school trips(subject/jollies/community outreach/DukeofEd award etc), sports tours, music training and tours and will do lots more. Most of these would not have been part of life or even possible at home.
Recreation. DXB is a hub and air travel is easy. Lots of interesting places are close and staff travel is fine with a bit of effort. Nothing will ever be as good as SAA travel perks but in the world picture SAA is abnormal. Recreation in DXB is also great from boating (some crazy types do it year-round), to diving, to hiking, to Kite surfing and even dune-bashing in your 4x4 (one only buys 4x4's here!).
Safety. We still get a kick from going off anywhere and leaving the house open as the kids are coming home from school later. Or going out at night and leaving the kids at home alone in an unlocked house. Also love seeing a bank worker put money in the ATM at a mall and there is only 1 bored guard not even watching and his only weapon is his cell phone on which he is in any case far too busy texting home to Sri Lanka to care about what is happening around him. Or being on a flight and the wife is fetching the kids at the beach on the other side of the city at midnight on her own and when she gets stuck as she doesn't understand the 4x4 process, lot's of people of all races actually come to help and not hinder. Or leaving your camera somewhere and days later you remember where you left it and come back and it is waiting for you where it has been handed in after being found.
Seniority list. Even with Emeritization, the only people to loose their posts are the managers and the seniority list is inviolate. It does not mean as much as at SAA since your command depends on your fleet not your number (Boeing was at 3 years and Airbus 5) due to cost, but no one is going to jump past you.
Destinations. If you still want to see the world, EK does fly everywhere. Some are shaky like Kabul, but others are wonderful like LA & San Francisco. And if you do not like long distance then bid for the short range stuff and the rest of the pilot pool will worship you while you get what you want (the rider is that the 330/340 fleet only does India and Africa at the moment!! EK5xx/6xx/7xx/8xx/9xx series flight numbers).
Friendliness. EVERYONE in this city is friendly and helpful, possibly some in the gruff New York way, but everyone will try to help and the worst ones are the expats. (come to think of it, the worst drivers are the expat soccer moms in an over powered 4x4!)
Part 2
The reason why I thought that part 2 is necessary is that I don't know when last I drove to work or flew with someone who was positive. I don't think I'm a negative person but right now things are negative. Someone I chatted to recently described the corporate environment as toxic. Most of us think that is a pretty good word to sum the situation up with.
With no particular structure or plan, here are some thoughts.
Since I wrote part 1, the company has grown by 100 pilots. There are now just over 3700 pilots. Do we have problems with recruitment or retention?
Malcolm Gladwell writes about a "Principle of Legitimacy", look it up. But essentially rules, policies and management style must include 3 aspects for a healthy "corporate" environment. 1 must be fair, 2 must be predictable and 3 the underlings must feel that they have a voice. Since I have brought this up, you are guessing that this must be contentious, right. Well I don't think any of them exist in Emirates. The most frustrating part is that management do not have the maturity to treat the culprits and not the group for transgressions. The standard refrain is that there are too many issues and too many people to handle the individuals. Well then how do the American carriers with 3 or more times the people do it? And in some cases like SouthWest become one of the top companies to work for? The bottom line is that each time some clot does something silly here, we all get punished. And it is getting stressful as you can achieve almost nothing to manage your life since all the little things that existed to create predictability like access to information (eg early roster information) are being taken away. And as they say, the 2 things that contribute most to stress are lack of predictability and lack of control. Rosters are full, we are flying hard. Options to contribute to our roster build are now virtually non-existent. We get them at the last possible minute despite the fact that they are completed within days of bidding closing. We are told they need the flexibility but my roster never changes and there are 5 times the amount of cabin crew and they get theirs a week before us? So to sum up this rant - Stressful (no predictability, no control) and Toxic (no voice, no logic, no fair).
Everything we hear about medical is anecdotal but Smoke and Fire must apply here. Not enough doctors, unreasonably large numbers of pilots on long term sick leave (reasons unknown), cabin crew not allowed to be sick without clinic visit (infer a hours long wait due to lack of personnel here!), career progression halted due to sickness ( the excuse is, if you were sick then you have not had the continuity of service to be ready for command). Actually I want to give this one attention. If continuity of experience was important, then no 380 or 777 FO would get their command until they are too old to fly since they can go weeks without a landing/take-off and a high percentage of their hours are in the bunk. The 330 FO's are really getting experience with a 90 hour roster and no layovers and no heavy crews. But then experience is not actually what this is about, is it? Back to Medical; the world does not have enough knowledge about Fatigue let alone the impact of an EK type roster on health. Lip service is paid to things like flight time limitations. When it suits the company, minimum rest of 12 hours can be programmed but if you try to swap into minimum rest then it is not acceptable - i.e. There is no policy or knowledge, just management idiosyncrasies. And the benefit for EK is that we all go away to die. Any health issues that could be attributed to rosters, abnormally high radiation levels due to EK type flying etc, all get handled out of environment in which EK is responsible. There is no community responsibility, there is no long term liability, there is no come-back. And that means there is no need to give it attention.
When I was hired, Emirates did not say "come and fly for us, we will fly you to the max, there will be no time for life while flying, but then we will give you a week/month/whatever off. Then come back and fly hard again" or any variation on that theme in which you know that they give you nothing but money and hard flying and then life continues when you are between flying. Emirates said "bring your wife along for selection, let us show you what a wonderful life you will have with Emirates. Let us show you what Dubai has to offer" in other words Emirates offered me a life. Now the way our flying is working there is no time for life. And when you say you are tired, you are told that you need to rest between flights, that is what a rest day is for. But wait, did you not invite my family to come with me? Do you know that a family needs attention?
Possibly the last 6 to 8 months is going to change, there have been a lot of aircraft arriving and not enough pilots. But I don't think so, I think the style has become entrenched. One of the worst to come is the new roster system we are all waiting for with fear and stress. The present one does not work because of all the conditions and restrictions placed on it. One of our managers for instance does not believe that pilots should be allowed to have multiple days off in a row. So that is a restriction placed on the bidding system. The rumour is that the new system will have just as many restrictions and also only allow 3 days off. Because office workers only get 2 days off don't they? Well sure; but do they fly from Harare, signing on at about 3 in the afternoon, fly to Lusaka and then Dubai and land at 5 in the morning - on a 2-man crew? And then if the company deems it necessary within 12 hours you go off on a night flight to India over the same hours. If that office worker can do that and safely land the aircraft and then run a life with only 2 days off in 7 then that office worker is my hero. No, we were offered a life and right now we do not have one!
Ok that's enough for now. If you want to come to Emirates, look at it all and know what you are coming to.