Housing Allowance
 

If you work for emirates do you still get housing allowance?for example if I lived in Manchester or London,United Kingdom.

Also can the housing allowance be used to pay off a mortgage for a house you have bought?

RAK
 

Big Gordie: sorry for the delay in replying.

You might be right about RAK, there are a LOAD of rental villas, apartments and studios, at VERY low rentals.

There is a good side to everything.

Been too busy paying my mortgage to read PPrune...

glf

Emirates is based in Dubai.

You cannot live overseas and work for Emirates. Commuting is not an option and is not practical. It is also very risky since Emirates standby travel is very difficult to guarantee due to constantly high load factors (you get bumped for cargo weight too don't forget).

You can use the allowance to pay for a mortgage if you like but realistically you would need to rent in Dubai whilst paying towards your mortgage back home. The rents here will almost certainly take up most of your allowance.

You can choose to buy here but with that comes many risks and you should investigate everything thoroughly and with mature attitude before committing yourself to such a bond. You can't just walk away from debt in this country if you lose your job, lose your medical, resign or whatever.

Not sure that's entirely true - my allowance pays my rent here and mortgage back home with spare change (admittedly the spare change is literally that).

Just as a heads up, the allowance is not officially available for those not making use of it already. If I can recall correctly, the 'freeze' started in December last year and was renewed this summer. I don't expect it to change soon but I am sure some colleagues may beg to differ, as I am merely giving an informed guess!

In order to avoid any surprises, I would be planning on the allowance not being available, should you wish to join.

I hear snippets of rumours that new joiners can still opt out (take the housing allowance) when they begin.

Might be completely wrong, but as a new joiner it might be worth checking out.


Eternity.

I Have recently been successful to join Emirates as an FO. The housing options that were given to me after acceptance of the job offer was:

Company housing furnished
Company housing unfurnished
Housing Allowance paid either monthly or in 6 month installments

I hope this helps.

Spoke with a new FO recently, and his take is that BEFORE you arrive in Dubai, you have the choice. If you did not choose before arriving, you will be in company provided housing.

I opted out, but I bought as the rental lockout is still in effect (not for new joiner!). Ek is very accommodating as I believe they are short on apartments at this time.

So as an FO I get about 40k per month before flying pay. More money, no Emirates accommodation BS. Win win!