Emirates 3 crew long haul destinations this Summer
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Yeah but pilots have ready access to their passports and a staff travel system (however flawed it may be) so if they're really in dire straits an exit is possible.
Not so for the poor guy sweeping the road or building the next lot of crappy villas. He needs to go "ask" for his passport and can only dream of having the cash (or access to it) to pay off a USD5K bond.
Not really a balanced comparison
Not so for the poor guy sweeping the road or building the next lot of crappy villas. He needs to go "ask" for his passport and can only dream of having the cash (or access to it) to pay off a USD5K bond.
Not really a balanced comparison
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To airline management almost the world over, regulatory limits are targets.
To an office KPI driven 'efficiency management' professional, there is ZERO regard for anything other than moving roster practice ever closer to a limit.
They of course have weekends off and no sleep disturbance, even if they find themselves listless, there is another sleep opportunity just tomorrow!
Your crew hotels another cost to be minimised.
Of course in a modern Orwellian nightmare like the UAE where Regulator and Airline Management are 'incredibly similar' when those limits are met, change the limits! Gives a whole new meaning to regulatory capture.
Fortunately unlike many other 'guest workers' in the UAE pilots are less indentured.
To an office KPI driven 'efficiency management' professional, there is ZERO regard for anything other than moving roster practice ever closer to a limit.
They of course have weekends off and no sleep disturbance, even if they find themselves listless, there is another sleep opportunity just tomorrow!
Your crew hotels another cost to be minimised.
Of course in a modern Orwellian nightmare like the UAE where Regulator and Airline Management are 'incredibly similar' when those limits are met, change the limits! Gives a whole new meaning to regulatory capture.
Fortunately unlike many other 'guest workers' in the UAE pilots are less indentured.
Sorry I disagree. I'm currently in my 10th Airline spanning nearly 40 years and never has any Director mentioned regulatory limits being targets. Yes KPI are more of a buzz word these days as much as the word graduate required for any sort of job. And without doubt the cost of a decent crew hotel was never mentioned. If you know your stuff you can get great deals out of the Marriott etc. So please don't tar all Airlines with the same brush (or CAA's)
As for weekends off and no sleep disruption - I once complained I worked 12 hours at a weekend and got nothing as a Manager whereas a Pilot could work 1 minute past mid night and get ££££ - My DFO said "go get a Pilots job" - so my advice to you is go get a Office workers job and take the £££ that goes with it.
Rated De
Sorry I disagree. I'm currently in my 10th Airline spanning nearly 40 years and never has any Director mentioned regulatory limits being targets. Yes KPI are more of a buzz word these days as much as the word graduate required for any sort of job. And without doubt the cost of a decent crew hotel was never mentioned. If you know your stuff you can get great deals out of the Marriott etc. So please don't tar all Airlines with the same brush (or CAA's)
As for weekends off and no sleep disruption - I once complained I worked 12 hours at a weekend and got nothing as a Manager whereas a Pilot could work 1 minute past mid night and get ££££ - My DFO said "go get a Pilots job" - so my advice to you is go get a Office workers job and take the £££ that goes with it.
Sorry I disagree. I'm currently in my 10th Airline spanning nearly 40 years and never has any Director mentioned regulatory limits being targets. Yes KPI are more of a buzz word these days as much as the word graduate required for any sort of job. And without doubt the cost of a decent crew hotel was never mentioned. If you know your stuff you can get great deals out of the Marriott etc. So please don't tar all Airlines with the same brush (or CAA's)
As for weekends off and no sleep disruption - I once complained I worked 12 hours at a weekend and got nothing as a Manager whereas a Pilot could work 1 minute past mid night and get ££££ - My DFO said "go get a Pilots job" - so my advice to you is go get a Office workers job and take the £££ that goes with it.
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it’s quite amusing to see how this trick worked on most of you 
. here is a small scenario on how it was done
Mr J : listen new guy we need you to work your magic , atleast these 3 trips a 3 men Crew asap
Mr C : consider it done
Mr C : dear friends i give you 6 trips of 3 men operation , 3 trips may be considered reasonable, 3 trips ridiculously undoable
Friends : this is madnesses
Mr C : Ok friends i hear you , only 3 trips just for you
Friends : Ooooooh They listen to us
Mr J :
THE END
. here is a small scenario on how it was done Mr J : listen new guy we need you to work your magic , atleast these 3 trips a 3 men Crew asap
Mr C : consider it done
Mr C : dear friends i give you 6 trips of 3 men operation , 3 trips may be considered reasonable, 3 trips ridiculously undoable
Friends : this is madnesses
Mr C : Ok friends i hear you , only 3 trips just for you
Friends : Ooooooh They listen to us
Mr J :
THE END
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Rated De
Sorry I disagree. I'm currently in my 10th Airline spanning nearly 40 years and never has any Director mentioned regulatory limits being targets. Yes KPI are more of a buzz word these days as much as the word graduate required for any sort of job. And without doubt the cost of a decent crew hotel was never mentioned. If you know your stuff you can get great deals out of the Marriott etc. So please don't tar all Airlines with the same brush (or CAA's)
As for weekends off and no sleep disruption - I once complained I worked 12 hours at a weekend and got nothing as a Manager whereas a Pilot could work 1 minute past mid night and get ££££ - My DFO said "go get a Pilots job" - so my advice to you is go get a Office workers job and take the £££ that goes with it.
Sorry I disagree. I'm currently in my 10th Airline spanning nearly 40 years and never has any Director mentioned regulatory limits being targets. Yes KPI are more of a buzz word these days as much as the word graduate required for any sort of job. And without doubt the cost of a decent crew hotel was never mentioned. If you know your stuff you can get great deals out of the Marriott etc. So please don't tar all Airlines with the same brush (or CAA's)
As for weekends off and no sleep disruption - I once complained I worked 12 hours at a weekend and got nothing as a Manager whereas a Pilot could work 1 minute past mid night and get ££££ - My DFO said "go get a Pilots job" - so my advice to you is go get a Office workers job and take the £££ that goes with it.
Nonetheless, one person's experience may be sufficient to form their opinion, and we thank you for your contribution, however our experience is broad, both from an operational and administrative perspective, so we respectfully differ in opinion.
Airline efficiency however is not a confined to one person's experience. Airlines themselves face two large operating costs. One they can't control (so, many airlines claim) fuel and the other one they can; labour unit cost. How each individual airline calculates the labour unit cost is an internal black box, suffice to say knowing your stuff would entail minimising it, lowering it where you can and extracting productivity improvements where able. This is perhaps why empirically it is axiomatic that changes around the margin have moved crew roster practice ever closer to the regulatory limit in the last forty years.
Students of airline finance understand one key metric of the Low Far Airline was utilisation. Improving utilisation and limiting stage length allowed Low Far Airlines the opportunity to squeeze an extra point to point sector, which a full service carrier faced complexity doing with a hub and spoke network. Naturally crews both cabin and pilot followed the aircraft and tours of duty needed to reflect this key point of difference. They did.
Full Service airlines have trimmed turn around times, increasing utilisaition all to drive efficiency. Some airlines have achieved substantial improvement in labour unit cost. Full Service Airlines can and have replicated Low Fare Airline practices where able, and empirically have bettered and closed the unit cost advantage once the sole domain of Low Far Airlines. As with the Low Far Airlines, crews follow the aircraft and consequently changing roster practice reflects this lower unit cost (at least in part)
Therefore to drive efficiency, often targeted by KPI inducements is a whole department's endeavour. We maintain contacts in all sorts of areas, some efficiency targets may be crew hotel cost, others are focused solely on the contract elements and extracting greater from the existing contract, identifying where savings may be generated in the next negotiation and securing these savings.
In the last summer we have seen British Airways captured by the Low Fare Airline mindset drive down the unit cost by removing included menu items on their flights. Whilst this singularity ignore the yield premium a full service airline can generate it is but another example of perceived 'efficiency' which by definition will include the highest source of cost controlled by airlines; labour unit costs.
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"Plausible Deniability"
Like many things in Aviation, of course it was not explicitly stated, but please do NOT try to deny that the unstated pressure was there to reach the 'performance goals' of the department. It's called "plausible deniability" and its endemic throughout management in this industry.
Just like "safety shall never be compromised" is the "stated" mantra while the actual pressure is to move airplanes is that is what is backed up by actions. Then when something goes wrong they can always fall back to their "plausibly deniable" position of "we never TOLD the (Pilot / dispatcher / planner etc.) to do that, after all we are safety-first!" etc.
Just like "safety shall never be compromised" is the "stated" mantra while the actual pressure is to move airplanes is that is what is backed up by actions. Then when something goes wrong they can always fall back to their "plausibly deniable" position of "we never TOLD the (Pilot / dispatcher / planner etc.) to do that, after all we are safety-first!" etc.
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Originally Posted by GKOC41
I'm currently in my 10th Airline spanning nearly 40 years
I certainly wouldn’t be boasting about that.....if true.
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If we’re Emirates pilots than none of us can say we’re Eisenstein’s. After all we’re slaving away for our Sand Masters because we did not get hired by our National airlines and boy are we paying the price for it.
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Cerbrus
I disagree with you regarding not being hired by national airlines and paying price in UAE. The real reason is taxation back home and cost of living. For the same set of skills we earned more coming to middle east and it worked fine for a decade.But nothing lasts forever i knew this from the first day I arrived in the middle of a sandstorm and boy i was asking myself why?
you know the saying "it was a good idea at the time"
you know the saying "it was a good idea at the time"
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I think the sad realisation that the situation will never be fixed has now been understood by the last of the Kool Aid drinkers and we are now concentrating on updating resumes and arranging interviews, rather than trying to help fix something that is broken beyond repair.
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Originally Posted by Seaman Staynes
I've not see many ASRs about it
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Do you ever worry about your longevity? In a European job you're possibly more likely to make it to 65 than in EK getting whipped. The impact of a career spent to retirement in EK is as yet unknown.