From my Friend that is a current NAS Capt. He has been in the Overseas market for 7 years (3 in India and 3 @ NAS.

", I have lots of photo albums about life here in the Kingdom. It's really not as bad as you might think, and can be downright fun actually ( I spent my day off yesterday snorkeling on the Red Sea with some flight attendants from Lufthansa sporting some skimpy bikinis who were on a layover at the compound where I stay, the Sheraton Red Sea resort). I never would have imagined Saudi Arabia could be a fun place but it actually is (behind the walls of the expatriate housing compounds) and that's coming from a guy who is from New York City. Americans have been living and working here since Texaco working on a contract with the Saudi government first struck oil in the 1930's and the Americans moved in to help set up the oil industry. Since then the government has had this kind of parallel system of housing compounds where Americans, Europeans and other westerners can live like they want behind the walls of the compound with bikini beach parties, homemade hooch (think the US during prohibition) and backyard barbecues while outside the Saudis are praying five times a day and the women have to wear abayas (the full length black gown that covers everything they wear, head covering optional for foreign women). As far as the company and flight operations and schedules and all that I guess the best way is for you to ask me any specific questions you might have and I will answer based on my experience here. I have been here since February of 2009 and there are around 10 other ex RAH guys here with me, most of us are on the 6 and 3 schedule and a couple of guys who live within 6 hours flight time over in Europe took the full time (3 and 1) schedule. In my 2 1/2 years here pay has never been late and all of my roundtrip tickets back to NYC have been paid for by the company without any problems and vacation has always come on time, every 6 weeks! As far as pay, you can't make this much flying a 190 (or a 777 for that matter!) anywhere else. We just got a big raise in June and the first paycheck (actually wire, since I have the company wire transfer all my pay directly to my Chase account back home in NYC) under the new scale was on July 31st for $18,900 net! It's insane and money is no issue for them! Last year under the old pay scale which was around 30% less I netted $130,000 and paid $15,000 in taxes to the IRS. And that was with almost 5 months of vacation time at home in the States since I had to wait around a lot to have my work Visa renewed (last year I had 3 regular, three-week vacations to the States totaling 9 weeks as well as one vacation that lasted a little over 2 months while I awaited my work Visa, all paid!). This year without any Visa issues I have so far had 4, 3-week vacations (we call them off-rotations) since my first one which was in mid-January and I have two more to go, one starting on September 17th and the last one, off-rotation number 6 will come a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving so I will be home for Turkey Day this year. Overall it's not a bad place to work. You make a boatload of money and as long as you respect their culture (just think of it as having to adhere to the house rules when you visit someone's home!) you will adjust with no problem. It's not like flying in the States in that most of the flight attendants like 80 percent are hot chicks under the age of 25! And you get a hot crew meal and if you have an early flight that stretches into the afternoon you get a hot breakfast AND a hot lunch, all served onboard by the aforementioned hot chicks! The majority of the trips are out and backs and you get to fly to cool places like Dubai, Istanbul, and Egypt. I've been averaging around 95 hours on the full months that I'm here which again nets you around 18G's. Some of the Airbus guys (same pay scale as us on the 190) end up making around 20G's a month because they have internations layovers with international per diem (around $115 bucks per night) in places like India and Pakistan. I'd take the India but pass on the Pakistan! LOL. Either way both fleets are making some really good bank! There are 9 Airbusses (8 A320's and 1 A319) and 6 Embraer-190's and there are rumors about 5 more Embraers coming so the future looks bright."