machpusher

Do any of you guys know where in Dubai the houselocations are for new hires these days. The rumour is "Silicone oasis" . Anyone ?

Typhoonpilot

Starting in three months time when the company takes possession of the villas it will be Silicon Oasis for about the next year. There are 560 Villas just being finished. That applies for people who are married with children only though. People coming who are single or married with no children ( other than DECs ) do not qualify for a villa.

TP

machpusher

Thanks for info.
MP

lazerball

Hello fellow Pilots, I recentlly attended the open house in ATL and found it very interesting. I have spent some time in Dubai and can say that its a great place. I was never bored or felt in any danger, I did not really enjoy the sand storm though. It's like being inside a baby powder bottle.
Anyway the ? I have is what qualifications make someone more attractive to the company. I know what their mins are, but what is the experience level of those getting called for the interview and subsequently getting hired. I have just over 6500 total, 1100 PIC Turbine, 5000 in Jets and types on the 737-800 and CL-65.

Typhoonpilot

What I'm seeing is between 4000 to 5000 total time with recency in B737 series. Recruiting have told me they will take guys with RJ time. I've seen them interviewing guys currently on the RJ, but with previous bigger aircraft time. I have yet to see a pure RJ pilot, although I have heard of some being hired, just haven't seen them yet. A guy with 3500 total and currently captain on a Brasilia was told to update at 4000 while attending the roadshow so they are looking at people with those times.

TP

IronWalt

Typhoon,

Thank you for your highly informative posts. They are excellent guidence for all.

One question I have is this. I have about 10000 hours and a pocket full of Boeing and Douglas type ratings. Good health and no FAA issues. Well qualified in all respects.

But I have been in a non flying management job outside the industry for the past 3 years. The last wheel I turned was 19 months ago on the CRJ. I am wondering how I should go about getting recurrent so that it reflects well in the interview. The last PC was in June of 04. I am wondering how to best bring myself back to currency so that it reflects well in the interview process at Emirates

wayne_krr

Tim,

I have no doubt that your intentions toward your colleagues in the US are entirely honorable. As well as this the information you provide is fair, balanced and truthful. It is what is left unsaid or unmentioned that concerns me.

You have placed yourself as the central point of contact for recruiting in North America. Even though you are self appointed you will have to bear some responsibility in the future for the new joiners who are bitterly disappointed. Your response will be to say that you have told them everything and that they come of their own volition but I don't think you have.

Your friend Gillegan makes a good point when he says the experience is different for everyone and I'm sure you would agree. A guy who joins from Korean Airlines, living overseas and with a wife and child born overseas will have a markedly different opinion to one from the mid west, employed at home with teenage kids to educate and having to wait three+ years to command.

That being said your account of the package should make it easier for this kind of prospective employee to decide that it isn't for him. However to blithely state that the traffic in Dubai are no worse than any big city is a deception. The traffic is certainly one element, but what about a statement on the safety of Sheikh Zayed Road. This is the most unsafe motorway in the world and us and our families use it on a daily basis. There is no active policing because the police fear losing their residence in the UAE because most are from Yemen, Oman and Pakistan and don't have futures at home.

Dubai is a thirld world city covered in a first world sheen. People have been arrested in public for kissing. You can't provide a truthful picture on crime in the UAE because the press isn't free and in any case that information wouldn't be made available because it would hurt the image of Dubai.

No doubt Prune has it's rabid element, but the central 80% of what the EK guys say there is true. I hope that your experience remains as positive. The problem with any contract job overseas (and ours is renewable three yearly as a visa to stay in the UAE) is how to get home. What jobs will be available to the guy returning from the wild east to take in the US that give them similar lifestyle?

It's not so much that you provide information to your friends, it's the fact that you are the self appointed boss of NA recruiting. Like the EK recruiters you provide almost all the information. Just not the stuff that really changes peoples lives.

Gillegan

Wayne,
I would have to concur. While the discussions can have a sense of hysteria about them, the fact is that on the whole, this is a very unhappy pilot group. You have to ask yourself why guys would be so unhappy at one of the most rapidly expanding airlines in the world (expansion being the airline pilots wet dream) flying the latest and newest equipment all over the world. Given the cost of living, rate of inflation and rapid (some might say out of control) urban development, I would describe our package as mediocre. I have been here ten years and at the rate my provident scheme is doing, I would need to work 100 years for a decent retirement (using just my provident scheme).

Let's talk about the driving here. In the last 3 years, the population has risen dramatically and while Dubai does seem to be trying to address the problem of not enough roads, this population (locals and expats) does not possess the requisite courtesy of their fellow resident (not just on the roads) to live in this density of population. A UN report rated the UAE roads the 3rd most unsafe roads in the world based on fatalities per 100,000 persons. I don't know how accurate that is but I do know that every single time I do drive, I come close to a very serious accident due to some idiot. I literally do not leave my villa as much as I used to just due to the driving.

Probably the biggest negative here right now is the scheduling. 3 years ago, a decision was taken by the management here to unilaterally increase the pilot productivity by about 30%. Anyone within management who had ever flown an airplane (and those guys haven't flown a full roster in years) was not part of the decision process. Leave and sick time was not factored into the numbers. Ultra-longhaul flights were to employ the dubious practice of factoring whereby time spent in the bunk was not to be counted towards the Flight Time Limitations. Guys on the A340 were flying in excess of 120 hours a month. Of course, our non-flying management used the rationalisation that we have all gotten used to hearing - "Hey, I spend 160 hours a month in the office. What's the problem?" Well the good news was that when the GCAA finally found out what the company was up to, they did put a stop to it but you have to ask the question, how did they get to start it in the first place and what were they thinking? (As an aside, while guys were paid for the overtime, the company then went and eliminated almost all non-flying duty that was credited towards overtime. The credit for a minimum day was eliminated. Credit for leave was eliminated. Recurrent training this month? No credit for that. Reserve? Sorry, that's free also. The promise was made that while we wouldn't receive credit towards pay, the credit would remain in order to balance the rosters. I had 2 weeks leave in January and was still rostered for 70 hours. You do the math.) Right now, scheduling is up to the legal limits of the FTL's. I had my bottom bid month in March (we have rotating seniority for rostering) and flew 105 hours scheduled block (100 hours actual block) and the only reason they didn't fly me more was the rolling 100 hours in 28 days limitation.

Many of us here are rather bitter because we saw the promise that this job has. The equipment is great. The route structure is very interesting and Dubai (at least in the past) was a very livable city. The company has been very good when you have a family emergency. It's not all bad but right now, for me the negatives greatly outweigh the positives. Wayne made the point that you have to consider how you will go back. That's the point I'm at right now. If I go back to the States, (and I know there's not much in the way of jobs happening right now) I either go back to the bottom of the seniority list (and my understanding is that FedEx requires you to have been resident in the U.S. in the last 5 years) or I troll around for another expat job.

While I am pretty out of touch with just what it's like in the States right now, I would be asking how long that's really going to continue. If you want to understand just how out of touch Emirates is with its line employees, just ask yourself what your company would do if they had no limits on the means that they could employ. That is pretty close to what we have been dealing with recently. Pilots are beginning to leave Emirates. Maybe not in huge numbers but enough to exacerbate the shortage that we already have. Pilots don't leave their jobs at the drop of a hat. You'll hear the contingent here that responds, "if it's so bad, why don't you leave?". Well, many are trying and I would estimate that a majority of our captains are seriously looking for jobs. Many of the jobs available now also have their negatives so we are all weighing things up - as are many of you considering this job. I would just be really careful as you will be moving your family 8000 miles, signing a training bond and once you are here, it is not easy to leave.

Could this job be worth staying for or coming for? In my opinion, yes. When Hong Kong started to become prohibitively expensive in the 1970's, Cathay responded by making itself the carrier of choice in terms of pay and conditions. They responded with an industry leading contract, reasonable working conditions and basings. I feel that Emirates needs to do the same. Right now, we are in a spiral dive - we are understaffed requiring guys to work even harder which exacerbates sick time, available leave and resignations. The only way I see out of it is for Emirates to improve the package substantially, set their manning targets at reasonable levels and to state so. Unfortunately I will be surprised if that happens.

Typhoonpilot

Hi Wayne:

Thanks for your post. Your are correct, I do tend to gloss over the negative aspects of living in Dubai. That is just my personality, I tend to concentrate on the positives, not the negatives. My point is that you can look for negatives in any city and any job. If you do that with a group of people you will each find something different that bothers you. You then combine that and have a self-fulfilling negative spiral that gets out of control ( ala PPrune ).

I took a statistics class in college. One of the texts was " How to Lie with Statistics ". The central point being that you can do anything you want with statistics depending on how you massage the numbers or phrase the point. There are over 40,000 traffic deaths in the United States each year. There are close to 300 in Dubai. If you divide that out by the popualtion of each place it comes to .0133% chance of a traffic death in the USA or .015% chance in Dubai. That is not a statistically significant difference. There is more though. A large number of the traffic deaths in the UAE are single car accidents involving UAE nationals. Even the police in Dubai acknowledge that statistic:

"Speaking at the launch of a campaign against speeding, he said that the ratio of UAE national dying in traffic accidents in Dubai was 32.5 per 100,000 UAE, while the overall ratio for the country was 19 deaths per 100,000 residents. This was a serious matter, he added. Col. Zafeen said this meant that UAE nationals were the most affected and they lost their children's lives in car accidents and in accidents related to other means of transport."

It is true, and very unfortunate, that sometimes these irresponsible lunatics take out an innocent bystander. That is what angers us and that is what we hope could be prevented. However, I do not know anyone in the USA who hasn't had a relative or friend involved in an accident with a drunk driver, often times with disasterous consequences.

So, while you have a slightly higher chance of being involved in a traffic death in the UAE than in the USA, it isn't enough to warrant a no-go decision. If you stay out of the vehicles of speeding UAE nationals and decide ( wisely ) not to drive in the late afternoon during Ramadan then you are probably safer in the UAE than in the USA.

If we applied statistics to violent crime and the chance of being a victim of such crime than I am sure we would find the UAE far safer than the USA. Petty crime and theft are other matters and I doubt we could find any good statistics for those arguments. I've personally been robbed at gunpoint in the States, doubt that would ever happen here. How about school shootings, how many of those have happened in Dubai ? Better yet, Post Office massacres ?

It is true that there are some really annoying laws in regards to displays of affection and/or relationships out of wedlock, but it's their country and we knew there were those kinds of laws when we came. The one that probably bothers me the most as being inhumane, if not downright barbaric, is when they throw a pregnant woman in jail just because she isn't married. ( note, for those reading, if your wife can't handle that when she reads it in the paper, don't come ).

I'm so depressed now . Anybody with happy questions?


TP

machpusher

Well, we all understand that different people has different views on their pretty similar lives, it's good info but every candidate will have to decide for themselves once they have been trough the interview prosess, and talking of which : Is the tech.questions day1 a multiple choice ? Is the interview dark suit and glossy tie ?