Emirates, are you happy ?
 

I would be interested to know what perception of their working environment, pay, carreer, pleasant compagny to work for ? etc.........you guys have in comparison to European majors.
Thanks for repeating what has undoubtly already been said here, but I wasn't around.

Right on, Bird On.

This could be the best job in the world, but our managers seem intent on preventing that.

If you have a reasonable job in your home country stay there. Four guys have resigned this month alone.

The same can be said for MOST overseas airline crew positions nowadays. The general erosion of pay and conditions has gone on for sometime, 'round about since 1990 or so. The bloom has definately gone off the rose.

As a joinining F/O with a family you can look forward to not saving any money for the first three years at least. Dubai has experienced a 40% increase in cost of living over the past five years. Our salaries were recently increased to a whopping 2% YES, TWO PERCENT. Early commands!? If that is your main motivation, think about it carefully. Three years service and 6000 hours, minimum requirements. Schooling!? Less and less space available for your kids, rapidly becoming a serious problem.

Housing! The biggest joke of them all. Company's official policy is: We will offer you company housing ONCE! If you do not like what we have to offer, then here is an allowance, GO FIND YOUR OWN. YOU WILL THEN HAVE TO PAY FOR EVERYTHING YOURSELF, EVERYTHING! Basically you will have to pay an adittional 20,000 - 40,000 Dhs per annum out of your very average salary to RENT your own place. Just imagine, 20 years service with this company and all that money you forked out over the years went to paying for the rent!!! Wonderfull!!! By the way the company can at anytime they see fit move you out of company housing for what ever reason, offer you a "new place" and if you do not like it! Guess what? Here is the allowance and HAVE A NICE DAY! But 'I am a senior Captain of fourteen years' you might protest!
TOUGH!!!

Basically we do not have anywhere else to go!
And management know this and acknowledge this by their actions and general attitude towards ALL emoloyees. And in many cases we even as employees of this company treat each other with the same contempt and disrespect.

So come and join us, we will show you how to re invent the wheel and teach you how to be more disrespectfull than ever before. Courtesy Respect and Manners is not our strong point!

HAVE A NICE DAY

..... uhm what's that I see approaching from yonder, across the vast desert dunes ? Allah be praised !! it looks to be an Autocamel bearing yet another masterful translation of some recently obtained Alsoran Scrolls with content pertaining to chapter 2 of 'The Caravan'

(see also: The Café Scrolls

Dear 'Check Six.' I wonder what the command prospects would be for somebody joining now as an F/O. I know I would be joining the back of a big list but is there a shortage of people with the required experience for command. I have the 1000hrs+ jet command time. Also, is this a new policy on accomodation to tighten up on people who keep refusing what they are offered first. Thanks in advance from a confused 'high & fast.'

high&fast---
You should know better, ONLY accept a Command if that is what you WANT, provided you have the experience. Do not, under any circumstances, get behind those already there. Direct entry, the ONLY way. It is sure to be offered in future, in spite of what is said by the "junior guys". Especially if they have another incident http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/eek.gif

411A,

There you go team building and making friends again!

Just back from the treadmill. Thanks a lot for sharing your views fellows. I really appreciate.

Is it those nice new villas on Sheik Sayed Road (164?) and the 84 (?) villas you are talking about, or is it the appartments which I haven't seen.
Please explain how EK will house it crews with an explosive expansion untill 2010?
Was it 210 longhaul jets Sheik Maktoum plan to buy. Could it be that there will be chances for basings out of UAE?

Nite Flite

What are the ranges of salaries ? Starting F/O to Captain ?
Do they really have plans to base people out of Dubaï ? And what's life like after work ?
Do they have direct entry Captain given the huge orders they've placed ?

'High and Fast.'

Hello again, I hope all is well!

1) Command. The way it stands is three years and 6000 hrs. If however you have the 1000 hrs command on jets prior to joining, you may have a shot at command a little earlier, although, not by much.

2) Accomodation policy. This is the company's bean counters 'fixing costs.' It is purely an accounting issue. There certainly were people in the past who refused certain standards of housing when the company offered it to them. In most cases those refusals were spot on! One very important aspect of accomodation, is ensuring that your family is satisfied with where they are going to be living for a long time. If they're not happy, pretty soon the euphoria of having joined wears off very quickly.
So now, the company will offer you housing, hoping that you refuse it! There costs towards housing is fixed at 95,040Dhs. For something descent, you need to pay 130,000Dhs and up, per annum. Your salary as an F/O starts at 16,000 Dhs. Of which a minimum of 10,000Dhs per month will go to living expenses in Dubai. Now you pay for car,RENT,water and lights eating out etc.

The 10,000dhs a month is based on an assumption that your family consists of spouse and two kids.

After three years as F/O, your salary will go from approx 17,800 up to 22,200Dhs. First line Captain. You then have another seventeen years ahead of you to reach the current top end scale of 38,400.

Schooling, is becoming very space limited, whether Emirates reserves seats or not,the situation is becoming more and more critical. One kid in school X and kiddie number two in school Y. If there are seats available!!

The time to have joined emirates was from about five years ago and earlier. From a financial point of you, and then again your investment of this money earned as salary had to be shrewd.

Good Luck!

Check Six

Thanks for the reply. As usual a very detailed and informative one. You have certainly helped a number of pilots who are making that difficult decision on whether to leave good jobs in their home country or not. Thanks again.

Regards, high & fast

I had the chance to join EK a couple of years ago. Having spoken to a few mates on the inside who gave very good advice, I stayed put. Sorry to say, their advice appears to have been accurate.

All that glitters is not necessarily gold!

The new villas you refer to are nice looking bricks and mortar, as long as you are lucky enough to get 'the' house without the damp. Nice if you have no kids but if you have small ones there is no place for them to play unless you are prepared to take them someplace in a car. The street isn't an option, dangerous driving or a building site. Of course, if your 4 year old has just had a tantrum....

The new utilities allowance is a joke and if it is anything like the car loan won't rise for the next 10 years. Right now in Jumeriah, 80k DH/year would rent a small 3 bed appartment and the other 15k would cover the utilities. If you are prepared to go off into the GAFA you might get something better.

Dubai offers lots of opportunities for the kids from watersports to ice skating. It is a great place to bring up kids in an outdoor lifestyle with nice weather and a multicultural environment. But there are some drawbacks. Despite what you might be told, crime does exist, it is just not publicised. Several Emirates Villas have been broken into over the last year, some more than once, the rumour is that it is drug related crime. We are not talking about crime on the same scale as other major cities around the world but Dubai is not a totally crime free environment.

Some of the older folks complain that the kids don't get to live in the real world and lots of familys ship them off to the home country to get streetwise when they reach their teens. A night stop in Dhaka can have the same effect.

Primary eduacation actually costs between 18 and about 25,000Dh in the Brit system but much more in the US system. Emirates cover about 19k. The schools are good!

The snag is getting your kids into the schools. They are trying to keep the class sizes down to about 20 but with little success. The order of precedent for entry to JESS, JPS etc goes something like: Older sibling in the school, British Passport, Company debenture, the rest of us.

In the past the companies just bought up more debentures to ensure that their employees kids got in. I understand that the debenture places have dried up. There are some other schools available but the locations generally suck. I know someone who has to send their kids to Sharjah. Were I coming to the interview again, I would ask if there are any school places available for my kids, and where, and whether or not there are any plans for pay to stay even vaguely in line with inflation. If not, family life could start to become a bind and if the family isn't happy....

Don't count on saving anything whilst you are an F/O and consider carefully the fringe benefits that your company offers you. Emirates provident fund is all that is available for the retirees unless they make there own arrangements. It has performed dreadfully (some guys have lost $100k from the fund) in line with the stock market over the last year. There are a lot of companies around the world that still pay final salary pensions for an employees modest 5% contribution. To achieve the same sort of deal here you will have to contribute a significantly larger proportion of your salary (15%ish?). (I read that the some of the UK charters are now paying 1.6%/year of service final salary pension, which if you leave as a training captain is big money for your retirement)

At Emirates, on a good month you will work harder than most other flag carrier long haul airlines but less than short haul or charter. If you are top bid you'll get a decent roster, if you are bottom you'll get a few nice trips to Bombay. C'est la vie! Not bad though. When you make the exulted rank of TCI/TCE they will squeeze every last drop out of you. Just like most places, profits are maximised by running lean on expensive personnel and paying them the least that can be gotten away with. Pilot representation doesn't happen, the only way to vote is with your feet.

The pay has been documented elsewhere, suffice to say that the package is eroding big time in real terms, which is not a good precedent and sucks if the only reason that you want to come to Dubai is for the money.

Hope that helps. Not trying to appear too negative, just a little more balanced. There are lots of good things about living in Dubai but also a few negatives that are sometimes glossed over. Dubai is very good at selling itself and so are Emirates. When folks first arrive everything glitters, nice shiny aircraft etc, and then the truth sinks in. As long as you are not just after cash you'll be ok, but financially at retirement even european charter airlines might offer a better long term deal. There are better places to work but also a lot worse; just make sure you take everything into account before making the leap.

Ghost



[This message has been edited by Ghostflyer (edited 02 June 2001).]

I must start by commending my fellow Emirates pilots on their observations with respect to the continued deteriorating conditions at Emirates and speaking out on this issue. It is refreshing to see the truth emerging from the iron curtain.

I have seen a marked change in attitude towards the treatment of the pilot group over the past few years at this company. While Emirates continues to expand and post record profits, they continue to squeeze and erode both the financial and living conditions of the very people who they rely on to perform this miraculous expansion they dream of. All the observations presented above by my esteemed colleagues I can attest are valid and accurate. Make no mistake about it, as one of the previous posters stated in this thread Emirates is a 3rd world airline (no matter how much glitz they attach to it) in a 3rd world country. Don’t be deceived by the gloss and enter this outfit forewarned and educated. Then you won’t be surprised when the conditions deteriorate further over the next few years and you’re left wondering why you left your previous employer for this bunch.

The one thing I have learned in this business is there is always a pilot willing to fill a seat in an aircraft and I have no doubt there will be those who dream of filling those seats at Emirates. My advice: for those of you with secure jobs at your present company with a future ahead of you: Stay. For those of you of you with considerable jet command experience: I would suggest you might want to watch for Direct Entry Commands (as much as I hate to agree with anything 441A might say) as I see them as a really possibility in this company in the future. For those of you who are desperate to find work: Come to Emirates as there is probably going to be a seat for you here. Should pilots heed this advice I will feel really comfortable knowing the First Officers I fly with will have at least come to this company with the “blinders off” and will know what they are getting themselves into.

Regards to all

Any ideas on why the conditions are deteriorating, considering the current?
Is there such still an "oversupply" of suitable and willing candidates?
Do they only want young singles (they do come somewhat "cheaper" after all)?
Are they aware of the possible "attitude"-effects of DECs on their current FOs?

It all doesn´t make a whole lot of sense to me, if I look at how they want to expand, and from what I´ve heard and read HRH isn´t stupid - on the contrary.

But then, maybe I just haven´t quite understood the mentality of the people in charge.

Good luck to all who are there or are going there!

Oh dear. This is all very worrying stuff. I suppose it's better to know the truth before you make these decisions.

Wonderbusdriver, you say "It all doesn´t make a whole lot of sense to me…"

Since when did it have to make sense? The men who run the show are beancounters, whose future, (and possibly bonuses), depend on how many dollars, drachmas, shekles, dirhams, pounds or francs they can save the Sheikh - (and here's the magic phrase) - in the short term, 'coz there hasn't been a beancounter born who's looked beyond the next balance sheet to gauge the long-term effects of his latest 'money saving' master plan.

I have to agree with the comment made earlier that there always seem to be enough pilots willing to take whatever's on offer, however poor that is. Sadly, the non-operations management know it, and despite all the blurb about their wanting 'the best', the fact is that all they really want is two bums occupying the two front seats. And the 'bums on seats' could well be read as 'the two bums in the seats' if you get my drift, 'coz that's the way pilots are perceived by such people - as overpaid, underworked bums.

"..if I look at how they want to expand, and from what I´ve heard and read HRH isn´t stupid - on the contrary." I too understand the Chairman to be very astute, but don't for one moment think he has the time to concern himself with anything as 'microeconomic' as whether the pilots are happy over their 2% pay rise as opposed to everyone else in the company getting 5%. (For those who might want to quibble, the 3% automatic annual pay increment is one of the very heavily stressed points in the pilot interview process. To my knowledge, no such inducement is offered to most other staff on initial hiring.) The sad fact is that management will continue to turn the screws a little bit tighter until one of two things happen:
(a) the well of all too willing recruits dries up, which is highly unlikely, for as has been said above, there are always enough pilots out there willing to take whatever's on offer, even if they see it as a short term sheer hell, but one way to get themselves a widebody endorsement. They might not be the pilots the recruiters would prefer to have, but even the most inexperienced (or marginal) pilots will keep the schedule running by being 'bums on seats'.
Or:
(b) a dozen or more pilots resign in a very short time - and for all the bitching and moaning, very few have done so and I believe very few are likely to, if only because of inertia. Until this happens, the men with the pursestrings can continue to tell the Chairman that all is well. And for them, it will be. Accountants have never been able to understand the first thing about the importance of a solid pilot experience base in a rapidly expanding airline. And if the Airline of the Year turns into a can of worms because of their 'clever' cost savings, you can guarantee they won't take the fall. It'll be the bunny - or should that be 'the bum in the seat'.

"But then, maybe I just haven´t quite understood the mentality of the people in charge." Amen to that.

Pirep.
GF history seems set to repeat it'self.



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We will do the drill according to the amendments to the amendments I er think?