EK email this morning
 

EK email this morning

Over the past few weeks we have been offering course dates to some of the candidates in the ‘hold pool’ to fill courses that have been confirmed for August and September this year. These course allocations have now been finalised. At this stage we do not have any further courses confirmed for the remainder of the calendar year. By the end of this year, those of you that attended our selection process in June 2008 or earlier will have been in the ‘hold pool’ for longer than 18 months. As 18 months is the maximum validity period for candidates to remain in our ‘hold pool’ we would therefore no longer be able to keep your file active for consideration against future courses. This is due to the possibility that a candidate’s flying and personal circumstances may have changed over this time frame and the requirement we have to validate again a candidate’s continued suitability for employment.
We are therefore now in a position where, if we do not confirm any more course dates this calendar year, we would need to invite candidates who pass beyond the 18 month time period back to Dubai to complete our selection process again. We therefore request you to respond to us please over the next two weeks if you would like to be considered for re-inviting back for the selection process in Dubai in order to remain valid in our ‘hold pool’. Some things we would like you to consider in making this decision are listed below:
• We may, depending on your previous assessments through our process, modify or reduce certain stages of the selection programme that you would be required to do in Dubai.
• Even though you have been successful in the past in our selection process, this does not automatically guarantee that you will be successful again.
• Due to the current economic situation and our need to contain costs as much as we can to ensure the continued success of our Airline, you would be responsible for arranging and funding your own flights to Dubai to attend our selection process. We would provide you with hotel accommodation and meals whilst here as per your first assessment process.
• If you are successful, you will again be placed in our ‘hold pool’ from which we will continue to draw candidates to allocate to courses as they become confirmed. Your status in our ‘hold pool’ would then be valid for a further period of 12 – 18 months.
• It is important to keep in mind that Emirates still has many new aircraft arriving as part of our ongoing expansion plans, including up to 20 new wide-bodied jets in the next 12 months. Therefore our requirement for pilots going forward will be significant. For this reason we do hope you will remain interested in Emirates and we are very mindful that you have been patient, which we thank you for.
Please note that for the foreseeable future we do not anticipate the need to be employing DEC's and therefore if you continue to be interested in a position with Emirates, you would need to be applying as an FO. In addition we have also been advised by Fleet to a change to our minimum requirements for direct entry FO's. All FO's must now have jet experience on a multi-engine Jet with a MTOW of over 55 Tonne. Based on this new minimum criteria we will not be considering further candidates with experience on smaller aircraft types. This also means we will no longer be considering those candidates already in our hold pool who fall short of the new minimum experience criteria.
We will be sending you an email on Monday following this update, asking you to respond to us in regards to confirming your interest in being considered further.

kkeehh31,

You beat me to it.
Hah
After being hung out to dry like the employee # that I am for over a year by these salad tossing camel fuc$ers, I would like to thank all those who shed light on the situation at Emirates. You have made my decision final and the 'thanks but no thanks letter iced the cake.' I wish all pilots and families at Emirates the very best and I hope a better opportunity comes your way soon. Life is too short to work for a$$holes.

I considered Emirates a good place to work for awhile before interviewing and after. But when they make 400+ million and already start to toss the contract aside, I could only imagine what it would be like if they lost money. They might handcuff you to the plane. I pitty those who continue to degrade the aviation world by taking the opportunity to work under poorer and poorer conditions for less and less. Once you lower the bar it will be darn hard to raise anywhere near what it used to be. DEC's you especially. :=

I wish all pilots and families at Emirates the very best and I hope a better opportunity comes your way soon. Life is too short to work for a$$holes. I am now off to the river to enjoy a sunny warm day with the wife and dog.

Later
Alvord

Thanks for all the answers guys :ok:
I really hope you are wrong mensaboy. There are worse, much worse airlines than Emirates in almost every sense and thats my case, so good or not...Dubai, here I come! :}

I hope I am wrong too and if so, will gladly admit it. Time will tell.

All the best to you and every other pilot who comes here. (I'm being sincere in case anyone is wondering)

To the staff of EK that tossed people's careers and lives for 18 months, i sincerely hope that you are happy with your decisions.

I made up my mind a few months ago but had many friends who studied for the interview, took time off, made the trip with their wife and kids, did well in the interview, went back home and waited, got the offer letter and told to wait, waited, waited, and waited,...and then told that they were not selected. I sincerely hope that noone from hr had to go through the ups and downs of so many that not only told their families about their career progression, but now has to re-explain why they are no longer qualified.

People like cosmo will come on these boards and tell you how wonderful ek is, but the fact remains...ek will sell a pilot downstream in order to save that extra dirham. This pool ordeal is a microcosm of the value that ek would have placed on you as a pilot. For you poolies, this is a blessing in disguise. Imagine the ordeal of the last 18 months and then foresee how much ek would have valued you when you signed on the dotted line.

I feel bad for you poolies but the economy will pick up, hiring will continue, and you will atleast have individual rights, christmas with the family, and an employer that will be defined by rules and a contract.

Something has to be said when 90% of the pilots that work for an airline tell you to not join. No amount of money or villa can replace the degrading treatment of a professional. Best of luck to those who join and i sincerely hope that you are treated fairly.

fb

I do hope that prospective joiners will note both the impassioned warnings from present EK pilots and also the sincerity of the well-wishes if you do choose to disregard the multiple warnings.

The statement that there are "much, much worse airlines than Emirates" can only come from one who is not working here. Think of this for a second...there are more than a few who have worked both for seemingly every bottom-feeder out there before Emirates. Why then are even those pilots trying to warn people away? How bad does it have to be before working for this outfit seem desirable? It's all about perception I suppose. If your life is truly in danger at your present gig due to people shooting at you or horrendous maintenance, I can see the appeal. But for 99% of those with CV's on file at EK...it WILL be a step backwards. In time - a few hundred years. In mentality. In lack of basic human civility. This place is a moral, human rights, environmental, industrial relations cesspool. If you can swallow hard and accept that, fine. But there's more to adjusting to life in the Middle East than the heat.

Good luck to all!

Forum Newbie said
......"I made up my mind a few months ago but had many friends who studied for the interview, took time off, made the trip with their wife and kids, did well in the interview, went back home and waited, got the offer letter and told to wait, waited, waited, and waited,...and then told that they were not selected. I sincerely hope that noone from hr had to go through the ups and downs of so many that not only told their families about their career progression, but now has to re-explain why they are no longer qualified."

Very well put FN, That is exactly how it's been with my family. It was very difficult telling my young children they wouldn't be going to have the fantastic adventure I'd promised them in Dubai, it's also very humiliating having to answer the "I thought you were going to Emirates " statement. Some people of course were delighted at my apparent failure.

I know of several fellow Poolies that did not receive the EK re-apply email yesterday, so they are still going through this.

Thanks for all the advice guys, dont think I dont appreciate them and Im not ignoring the warnings, but I stand to what I said and here are the facts:
I make $56000 a year after taxes and I have to pay for everything including housing, education and medical which are all the most expensive in the region.
Benefits?...yeah, I have a 10% discount at the gym. Im treated like a number, cant choose my roster and it can be almost completely modified, so no much planing in your personal life here. In our off days, we get "invited" to meetings with management, classes of diferent sort or even called to fly because "theres no one else". Although its illegal, I couldnt take a single day of vacation in more than 2 years and then, all of a sudden, they forced me to take 15 days and I couldnt even choose the date! -"after this flight, your on vacation"-
The city is one of the most contaminated ones in the world, Im afraid of living in a house because crime runs rampant here, so we had to rent an apartment with private security... oh, did I mention that I was "indefinitely unfit for command" because I was in EKs successful pool?...yes, those were their exact words.
So my friends, you are not at the bottom of the food chain. The third world is big and has many faces.

EK pilots who complain, dammit adjust!!!!! I will trade your position any time!!!!! Fire on!!!

Flaite - well done on your success with EK. The people on this website who try to warn everyone against joining constitute probably .01% of the pilot workforce. In EK you will be getting good training and flying shiny new aircraft. Dubai itself is 'different' but I do know a lot of people happy as pigs there.

Enjoy your new job!

The conditions at EK aren't bad comapred to alot of other places..what has stung lately is the large number of changes for the worse that have been implemented in the last 6 months.

The real issue is one of security...the way EK runs the show here you never know when you'll find yourself fired..could be for something minor that they just don't like and they happen to have a surplus of pilots at the moment and want to make an example, maybe in your first 6 months during training..maybe just after your kid starts school, or maybe just after your wife is pregnant...never know. Then you find yourself and your family a long way from home and trying to figure out what happens next. It's the sense of permanence that is lacking badly.

Avlord wrote

"DEC's you especially."

You didnt even get the job and your on the bandwagon.

Youve got it all wrong.

Emirates screwed you. The decs would have been three years from now. Dont jump the gun:ok:

Anyone receive "EK update status" from HR?

I received an email from HR stating if I'm still interested to respond with an update so my application will stay active.

Only 60 forecast new hires over the next year, many widebody applicants around and will be first choice as many already type rated.

Don't hold your breath on this one, get looking elsewhere unless EK aircraft type rated.

Good Luck

Pia

Sorry to repeat a question.........did anyone in the pool receive a letter from EK to update status?

I did and i wish they would just go away instead of playing with us over a year.

Yes I did, not updating and no more waiting!!! :yuk:

EK can find another fly boy to bend over, think I'll go back to fixing toilets, pays better and you get far less SH1T! :}

Best of luck to you all. :ok:

PP -out!!! :)

Yes, I did. Also got a letter last week telling me if I'd like to continue in the pool I would have to come back on my own dime and reinterview. I turned it down. What did you do, Shaft? Others?

I did not get a letter. I think they know who i am but i could care less. After everything that emirates put the poolies through, now they are offering a second interview!!!

Wait, it gets better...emirates is going to reinterview you but you have to pay your own way now. How cheap can this company get?

Let this be a blessing in disguise gents, you just saved your marriage and heaps of anxiety.

fb

Well, we all told´ya...but you boys didn´t wanna listen to us guys with the insight :ugh:

End of story?

forum newbie, applicants always had to pay their own way to interviews with EK until a (very) few years ago when the applicants, to put it simply, stopped applying.

Now that there's a glut of pilots on the market again, they've very quickly reverted to their old system of never spending a Dirham that doesn't need to be spent. At the risk of causing enormous offence to some, I'd say the second interview requirement is mute testimony to the fact that with the current glut of applicants in the market, EK has also been able to revert to interviewing applicants with the experience levels they traditionally took until a very few years ago.

It's an indisputable fact that over the last few years, thanks to the then dearth of suitably experienced pilots on the market, EK was forced to take on pilots - both FOs and DECs - who before then wouldn't have even been picked for an initial interview.

I'm not discussing ability here, but simply previous experience.

The big question is - with the new 'lean and mean/slash and burn' approach to pilots that the EK mnagement has adopted over the last 12 months, even in the current terrible worldwide economic situation, whether they'll be able to attract sufficient numbers of those more experienced pilots? My guess is that they will, because despite all the warnings from those already slaving at the coalface, pilots looking for a job traditionally hear only what they want hear and don't start bitching until after they've got their own feet firmly placed under the table.

If you guys applying at EK are frustrated with the way you are treated by recruitment (i.e. Waiting for months, no updates, no answer, constant changes, pay or not your ticket.......).

This is just a taste.

WAIT until you get here!!!!!

I think Wiley's got the situation pegged to a 't'.And as others have said before me, bitch you will.

Forum Newbie
 

It sucks to come back against a flat lie like that. You can review every post you'll never find a line I wrote stating this.

In the other hand, you'll find out I told things would be worse, and they are.

All the comments were in relation to other airlines. T&C degrading everywhere.

So, stop being a pri*ck, FN.

You'll be ten years to command, things are gonna slow right down... the rosters are murder ladies 'n gents...

all you new joiners, 'specially the ones startin' in Aug... don't say you weren't warned.

FYI, as of a few days ago, EK now telling new joiners that time to Command is a minimum seven years.

Translation: 9 years

I would be somewhat wary joining EK at the moment.

Yes a job is definitely better than no job and the pay is ok though it will be earned with fatigue, disrespect, and an a care-not attitude to any problems.

Living in Dubai is likely to get unpleasant though. The city is in deep economic strife and there is much more to come. So is EK I hear. Each week another loss. There will be further cuts to T&C with little to be done about it.

The mantra's abound: "If you dont like it - leave", "You are lucky to have a job". Not exactly a model of Resource Management though they would have us believe that they place high value on this in an aircraft. Only it is not practiced from above.

For a single man woman with no ties or obligations to the place and no intention of doing anything without being able to leave the uniform on an overnight and drift away - then fine. EK will work (And so will you!)

For someone moving a family, or intending setting up shop here for some time including capital outlay on the required utilities, then think long and hard. Your family is unlikely to thank you in the future.

we've been warned ...
 

It's been a while since my last post here at the pool thread. Completed a year in the pool recently and got the news to join this september. After looking at my present situation and the pros/cons of leaving my current employment (P1 narrowbody ) and other factors , I had to decline the offer.

It was a difficult decision to make considering that EK is one of the major airlines in the world and an opportunity like this may not present itself very soon in the near future.

Funny thing is the other selected pilots from my group have also turned down the offer due to various reasons . It's a shame really 'coz I was really looking forward to joining after the interview in Dubai.

Best of luck to all of you and my only suggestion to those in the pool, do look at your situation properly ...EK might work for you if your situation requires it , a decision to join is entirely case- specific.For all those in EK giving us the low-down , thank you for your time.

masalama.:ok:

masalama do you know how many turned down the offer and how many accepted?
tks

I would say most accepted. Let's be realistic - you wait in the holding pool for a year, checking pprune every day to see if there are any developments and then bang....... you're offered a job. Are you really going to turn it down? - even with the harbingers of doom on this thread warning you that you'll hate Dubai, Emirates, the way of life, the traffic, the people, etc, etc. You've been waiting a year and you want this job big time!

I would even suggest that various posters on this thread who have said they were offered the position but turned it down weren't offered the position at all.

As a career move, you can't go far wrong in Emirates. For a young FO joining, they are giving 7 years to command, but we all know the state of flux the airline business is in - today it's 7 years; next year it might be revised to 2 years.

Kep Ten--no comment on whether to join or not--that is individual.

But TWO years!!!! Don't give people false hope. With 2400 pilots it would require 1200 upgrades per year to upgrade in 2 years. That is just not feasible.

Rejected Job Offer
 

My husband turned it down. No regrets.
We are used to the desert as a family but the way EK is heading is sad.
:sad:
We are not rich but we don't have to put up with the degenerating T&C's. Once you get there with a family it's like the 'Hotel California', car loan, credit cards, education, spiraling costs of living and imploding property market. You are in debt or you don't save with the cost of living, so what's the point of a hardship posting where you are trampled on.

Good luck to those who accepted the F/O positions

Best of luck
 

:ugh:Hey all those that turn EK down. Thank your lucky stars that you did. You're not missing much and there is more to life then flying Big Jets. You did your career, your life and your sanity a favor.

Best of luck to all those that didn't get suckered in like me.

Just heard of a hold pool guy being called up for Airbus training at EK with very short notice just recently. I thought the hold pool business was over or...?

The POOL is rapidly becoming available now, haha. Bring it on! You guys with a normal life are absolutley out of your miinds to come here...... or perhaps your are just so desparate and stupid you don't realize what a nightmare it is here!

Can't wait to fly with you, and listen to you explain how you got sucked in. I have no sympathy whatsoever.......... anymore............ for idiots.

9/10 pilots coming to EK in the next few years, will feel humiliated, abused and helpless a few months after they arrive......, NO QUESTION about that fact.

They say we hit the bottom back in May and have been
climbing out of it since.

But it was more likely just a last minute cancel by someone
who thought better of the offer.