No polax52 I wouldn't say one should not come to Emirates! Just that one should make an informed decision. A good analogy sadly for our situation is rat poison - 99% food and 1% that kills the rat. And what I mean by this is that in truth, 99% of what we have here is good. It's just that the 1% of rubbish I've mentioned above, because it has become so entrenched and pervasive, starts colouring all the good stuff with a pretty gloomy hue. Probably a bit contentious writing this post as well because we are the sort of people who are prone to doing silly things like paying for our own ratings and accepting ludicrous training bonds just so that we can fly. In other words this effort is going to be all you need to view everything I wrote above is worth ignoring. And there will be pilots who are going to frown a bit and may even look at me sideways for the following, but such is life.
I like the flying! I have fun on virtually every flight and we have a tremendously diverse operation which is challenging and inspires thought and effort on most occasions. Virtually to a man, everyone I have flown with is worth flying with and that means a lot to me. And this is odd since we are not a homogenous bunch from the same training and same cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Possibly because of where we are and the mindset with which we got here, we all put in more effort in the cockpit?
The frown and sideways look bit. Many aspects of Ops and Training are very good. For instance, for every story about how a pilot on operations was badly treated by Ops, there will be another in which the situation was well handled, possibly more. I also enjoy training events, no one is there to take you out and again virtually to a man the trainers enjoy what they do and try to help. To a great extent though we have to admit that we can apply the American parable about the farmer and the travellers here (on both sides) - hopefully you can figure this out for yourself!
You have to consider your options and what's available. For me, family safety is my main issue considering where I come from. This environment ticks all the boxes on that score and more than that, due to the positives I mentioned in part 1, whenever we even test the concept of leaving my son tells me we can go on our own. I can't make a call on the other gulf carriers but I do know that I would not go near one of them normally, but even there it depends on your circumstances. If you want to be a part of a big operation which is the next best thing to a stable, legacy carrier, then Emirates is probably one of the few options out there.
Ultimately it is sad that the rat poison syndrome exists. The problems I mentioned above really are almost all-consuming. One does need to know about them, consider them and define a relative importance. Whether you are in, or thinking of getting in. Even though I am fundamentally a positive person, at present I struggle to shrug off these issues just because there is so little I can do about them. And worse, we all know that with little or no cost, most of the issues can be sorted out if there was just a will to do so. I don't think there is a will to do it though and that is where it all falls apart.
PS, 170to5 I agree; we all know who the worst drivers are. It just unsettles me the most when I see an expat soccer mom doing the LH lane 180 kph thing, which inspired the facetious remark!