Now the unbelievable irony is having been grateful for the ability to pick and choose from the applicants who made the experience filters due mainly to personal recommendations, EK are trying to blame those of us stuck here for having the audacity to tell the truth.
And therein lies the rub with the situation as I up until about 6 months ago, saw it first hand.
The various minions in various departments are way too busy covering their arses, feathering their nests and of course building their empires. The immediate superiors of these minions are either too stupid, incompetent, malevolent and likely disengaged from reality to have any real idea of the feelings of the troops on the shop floor. This reality is further reinforced by a sense of self preservation, particularly in the case of expat management types thanks to EK being the goose that lays their golden egg, and remains as such until either one of their buckets fills up. These mid level types also have an obsessive desire too not rock the boat, lest they upset one of the volatile and well married locals.
So, given enough time, small issues become larger issues, recruitment, retention, and engagement plummet amongst operational staff which leads to less experienced people making poor decisions and an inevitable crisis of one form or another.
If you keep cutting corners pretty soon you have no where else to cut which leads to leave not being awarded, manual insertions, roster rules being violated and "exceptional circumstances" being considered normal. EK can no longer attract quality people in any quantity from quality organisations.
This all brings us back to where EK is failing staff; flight-crew for their part at EK tend to be well educated critical thinking individuals. Most take pride in getting the job done to the best of their abilities, typically they have 1st world attitudes to employment conditions and can smell BS a mile away, they are the polar opposite of what various levels in EK desire them to be. This 1st world attitude for the most part means the individuals and the team place flight safety above all else, it means for the most part they are not cowed or bullied into compromising their standards, it also means that when things are on a down hill slope they aren't shy about pointing out a few home truths.
I no longer have a horse in this race, but EK is presently a only few furlongs short of Gulf Air Mk2.
It's all sadly now from what I can see and am told becoming an increasingly accelerating self fulfilled prophecy, I'd NEVER recommend a job at EK to anyone in its present state.