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.