INXAT thanks for the lesson. Yeah we all needed that. So you at Air Bubba gave up all your benefits and now you want to come over here and take our seats. Get in line bubba! You ain't special.
Don said it a lot more eloquently than I ever could. Is that how you sleep at night? Since in your estimation I took a locals job you can take ours? Every local who wants to work for EK gets the job as long as they pass the training. Fact of the matter is that very few locals want the job because they can make much more money in their family.
Save the history lesson for some sucker who would actually believe that crap. We all know what you voted to give up.

LHR Rain
 

You really are a sad guy.

Go rain somewhere else.

"If you should come back, I shall taunt you a second time, you silly English kininiggit!!!"
(courtesy of Monty Python)

Amen Don, Amen, its only about money, forget honesty, quality, integrity, safety, best practice etc. Like it or not (and they don't) there is a cost to running an airline, you can only cheat it so much.

I usually lurk and not post on threads such as this one, but I feel I can’t let the following comment from IXNAT pass unremarked.IXNAT, your comment displays a depth of ignorance of the situation in Dubai and in EK that is truly breathtaking. (Some would be tempted to say that it closely parallels the ignorance all too often displayed by your government in dealing with a larger and far more serious situation in this part of the world.)

Where does one start trying to explain to someone so obviously totally out of touch? Let me put it this way. The day an Expat pilot “takes the job of a local pilot in EK”, I’ll sink my whole fortune into setting up a company selling pork futures on the Riyadh stock exchange.

As has been said already, being a pilot isn’t a job too many of the local lads aspire to. The vast majority would much rather become CEO of one of their father’s many companies – preferably about ten minutes after graduating from college.

The ones who do become pilots are almost all from not so well off families. (There are exceptions.) And what might surprise someone fed on a poisoned diet of US Fox News, with very few exceptions, they’re a damn fine bunch of young men and a pleasure to fly with. But many of not most of them put as much time into setting up businesses and running them as they do flying, to the point where most of them much prefer doing out and back single day flights to multi day away ones, (which they leave as much as possible to the idiot expats).

Add to that a very small local population base (less than 20% of the country’s total population are Emarati), and you don’t (at least yet) get enough local applicants to fill the needs of the airline.

Despite this, EK (read: the ruling family) is positively encouraging ‘locals’, (as the Emaritis are almost universally known here), to take up training to become pilots (and every other skilled position within the airline). And I can assure you, if they could, they would replace every expat with a local pilot tomorrow. And if that day should ever come to pass, they would terminate the contract of every expat pilot so quickly, we’d all be out of the country before the ink dried on our letters of termination.

Just as, I dare say we (or you) would do if the roles were to be reversed.

Gotta luv a good fight :O I will say you gentlemen are right in that I do not know the ins and outs of the nationals story. For that I will bow to your expertise, but rainman, your understanding of the US carrier situation is as ignorant as mine is of the situation with nationals at EK. And what did I vote on to give up? And don't worry, I sleep pretty well at night, thank you. But I'm not in 43 degree heat. It was actually around 22 last night. But boys, whether you like it or not DECs are a way of life there and at other carriers that don't have unions, even in the states when a new type aircraft comes on board. I will say one more thing (and I will crawl back into my hole and cross the NATs weekly)......At one point the (I like that) Air Bubba pilots were the highest paid in the world and yet get on the web boards and you heard the same type of whinning, moaning or however you mates, chaps or whatever, call it.

I sincerely wish you all the best of luck. Their are bigger issues going on in your neck of the woods than DECs. And I hope you get to fly with the two gents I know quite well over there. Despite the fact you think them scum, you will enjoy their company. Be good boys. I'm tired of this.
IXNAT