Oman ATC recruitment

[TinPusher]

Hi All
The Omani ATC people have been doing a road show lately trying to recruit Area controllers for Muscat.
The deal is OR3000 per month plus flights for the employee and family at the beginning and end of the contract.
For those of us with children it's hardly an attractive proposition as the cost of education is around OR1000 per term. While I'm assured that Oman is the place to be in the Middle East for quality of life the financial package on offer is hardly inspiring but as there is quite a bit of interest from these parts (NZ) I'm wondering how their offer stacks up.
Interested in your thoughts
TP

[fredchabbage]

how much is OR3000 in pounds? or euros?

[Superfluous]

Or in USD?

[ThreadBaron]

£4000+

Oman is the place to be in ME\Arabia ... if you can live within the means of the package. I'd go tomorrow, but I do not have to make the decisions you might have to.:ok:

[TinPusher]

1 Omani Rial = $US2.6

[Muldrake]

A fellow collegue is down there now on a one year contract. Apparently he is having the time of his life. Very nice country it seems, once you get past the whole middeleast way of doing things...

He highly recommends it, and I am looking of ways to go there myself. Gotta convince the company to give me leave though. That might prove hard.w

[Quokka]

Muldrake, I hear that Denmark used to give leave for controllers to do a few years in the ME, but now I hear that they no longer give you leave due to a critical staff shortage...?

[Muldrake]

Yup, the leave situation is not looking good at the moment. We have been promised that they will open up in 2008, but who knows.

We are beginning to implement our new ACC (DATMAS) system, and that will take up a lot of hands for some time to come. I am just comming back from a years leave, and the mentioned collegue is 3 months into his. We are the only two who has gotten leave for a very long time, and that will propably continue.

But when the time comes, I am applying again. Would like to work somewhere else in the world,when I have the chance. How is Oz or NZ for employment. I know of the whole Aus Visa thing, but apart from that.?

Cheers,

Muldrake

[Quokka]

Muldrake,

The ATC service provider in Australia is called Airservices Australia, semi-government commercial entity providing Air Traffic Control, Rescue & Fire Fighting at airports and engineering support for radio navigation equipment.

They don't advertise for overseas controllers, but, if you ask for an interview then they will discuss options for employment with you.

We are short and the managers here are living in a bit of a delusion that the staff shortage will just miraculously disappear. It won't. You might get a job here, but the salary will be very low compared with Europe.

The cost of living is low in Australia and the lifestyle is good. You have to decide what value you place on lifestyle and experience, but you won't go home with a bucket of gold after working in Australia for a few years.

You can contact them through the website www.airservicesaustralia.com

Good Luck!

[TinPusher]

Quokka

Was there much interest from your side of the pond regarding the Omani recruitment drive?

TP

[Muldrake]

Thanks Qoukka.

I'll give that a shot. Strangely enough I am not in it for the money, but for the experience. As long as the pay gives me a chance for a fair lifestyle, I'm ready to go. Wierd ain't it...

Besides with the taxrates we are suffering up here in the cold north, after the government takes their share, not much is left anyway...

Muldrake

[tennis]

Hey Quokka!

Australians overseas can't even get even get jobs let alone non-Australians. HR and ASA managers have no idea what they are doing. They nothing about developing healthy relationships with their staff. They don't do their homework or reference checks properly. And after contant restructuring, they forget to tell their managers what their new role is. I don't know how you guys work there. I don't know how ASA survives. But then again it's not really is it?

Good luck:ok:

[Shitsu_Tonka]

Low cost of living in Australia?

Where are you living?!

[divingduck]

Hey ****su and others,

The cost of living in Oz IS low compared to many places...like Muscat for Abu Dhabi for an example.

A villa in Ab Dab will set you back in the region of $1000 per week...in Muscat about $500-600 per week.
White goods are cheap, petrol may as well be free, electricity and water are not cheap. Internet is as dear as poison as are phone calls.
If you are using Skype VOIP, well it has been blocked in the UAE and will probably be blocked in Oman soon. The Omani's killed Net2phone within a month of it starting, they didn't like competition.
Food is not as cheap as in OZ either although to be fair, eating out can be very cheap. Great varieties of foods too.

I am in a pretty good position to say, I am in Ab Dab, having spent most of the last decade in Muscat.

Tin pusher and Muldrake...

Living in Muscat is horses for courses. If you are married with a young family and enjoy history and outdoor activities, Muscat is the place for you. I had a fabulous time there, fishing, diving, camping, hiking (very large mountains) and the general history of the place is amazing. The night life for singles can be a bit of an issue.
The Omani people are just about the friendliest people in the world.Get a flat tyre and they will just stop and help you change it...even in the middle of the city!

Let me know if you want specific questions answered and I'll do my best.

Work is a different issue entirely from living there!

[IMHFO]

AA (not ASA but even most of their managers can't get it right). Be careful. Similarities to NAVCAN. Closed shop, nepotism, prostitute managers, shocking training systems from school to Centre. Beware the pending AWA's. Union has no power/influence. A corporation wholly owned by one share holder the Oz government = a safety system comercially based - guess how well that works! Lots of shoe polish cleverly covering the cow shiit - just beneath the surface. Disturbing that they got the IATA award for safety - says much about that assessment!!!! Come to Oz, embracethe culture and live in the best country. Get a bar job.

[AirNoServicesAustralia]

Muldrake if the high tax rate in Scandinavia is bothering you, don't go to Oz. Aussies get taxed to hell every which way they turn. Money in hand at the end of the day, you will be miles ahead in the Middle East. As Duck said, with that comes some other issues, but I would recommend the Middle East to anyone for a great experience for a few years at least.

Gotta say though whoever it was that said Oz has a low cost of living, hasn't tried to buy a house in a good suburb of Melbourne recently, and with rising interest rates, the situation is getting worse by the month. And try eating out on the cheap in Melbourne! Quality of food is second to none, but almost as good here in Abu Dhabi and for a fraction of the cost ( unless you insist on eating all swanky at the Beach Rotana that is). A brilliant steak dinner , with starters and many many many beers at 49'ers for two, 200 dirhams ($70 Ozzie), will struggle to find that in Oz these days.

BTW Tinpusher, if 3,000 a month isn't enough for you and you don't mind living in an apartment rather than a villa, you can make 33,000 dirhams (about OR3,300 a month) in the Area Centre in Abu Dhabi, and from all reports schooling is about the same price, as is all the rest of the costs of living. Bonus here being, that you live an hour and half drive south of Dubai (but thankfully don't actually live there!), and that Etihad is growing all the time as is the number of cabin crew (many from Scandinavia I hear) based in Abu Dhabi. Worth considering.

Muldrake you wouldn't feel out of place here either since we have been flooded with Norwegians, Swedes, and bits of both (I guess you'd callem Swegians??) lately, so Scandihooligan is the language of choice in the centre a lot of days.

[TinPusher]

ASA, cheers for your interesting comments. I would appreciate a contact address or email regarding employment in Abu Dhabi if you don't mind. PM or post is fine.
Re tax rates in OZ, hasn't the govt recently provided significant tax cuts over there? It made the news here a while back with the media reckoning there would be a mass migration over the Tasman because of it...

[AirNoServicesAustralia]

Haven't lived in Oz for four years so don't know what the recent tax cuts were, but if like the ones that came in with GST, it will be a case of giving with one hand and taking with the other (eg. Bring in GST and promise to abolish stamp duty, but then stamp duty remains and so no better off).

TinPusher, there are two employment options here. One is with Serco, but they have limited vacancies, but overall probably the more attractive package (just), mainly cos as a person new to the Middle East they do the visas, and give you a place to live (but the cost of that is deducted from your salary along with utility costs). I would hate to come to the UAE and have to live in a hotel while trying to find a place to live, while training on a very challenging chunk of airspace (and finding accomodation here is not easy). The other option is direct hire with GCAA (the local authority), and is the same money but is very much, "heres your money, now you are on your own".

I don't have the contact addresses at hand but if you search a bit on PPRUNE earlier threads I am sure they have been posted before. Let me know if you don't have any luck.

[Muldrake]

Many thanks ASA.

This thread has definitly given me some usefull advice on how and where to proced.

Cheers,

Muldrake

[Quokka]

IMHFO, spot on and thanks for the laugh! Best short summary of AA I've read in ages. If I'd tried to paint the same picture, it would have been too long for a pprune post.

ANSA, yes property etc is high in Oz, comparison was with Scandinavia/EU only for Muldrake's benefit. I'm guessing that it'd be a few years in Oz only, renting rather than buying and eating out a fair bit and living the lifestyle. Too short to get caught up in the politics of AA and maybe too short to care like the rest of us.

Life is good in the little bayside inner-city enclave that I'm share-renting in which is shielding me from the property price balloon that's about to burst when all the Baby-boomers sell up their negative-geared property portfolios and put what money they get out of it into their Superannuation, as per Peter Costello's "transitional" superannuation concessions. They avoid Capital Gains Tax and pay no tax or 15% Superannuation tax (depending on how it's done and depending on the final wording of the legislation when it appears in Parliament sometime this financial year) on it when it's rolled straight into Super from the sale of the property.

Single, no kids, my situation is different and my reasons for heading to the desert have more to do with living the lifestyle that my ex-pat friends in Europe and Asia are living now than in leaving the politics of work in AA. I've copped a few nasty baseball bats from Managers in the back office here, but I've ducked almost all of them and my return swing has connected each time. SERCO etc are a different employer and I know to keep my mouth shut and play the game, and reap the benefit of the lifestyle I'm seeking.

As Muldrake was alluding to... it's not about the money... it's about the life experience... what is familiar and uninteresting to one, is exotic and enticing to others...

[Quokka]

How many people attended the Brisbane sessions? Anyone going?

[tobzalp]

What dates? I was going along to beef up the numbers for the Airservices spies to report back on. On leave at the moment.