You are a number. I have been working as crew for over a year and I have NEVER met my manager, even as a new trainee coming from another oountry, there is no one looking out for you. You are completely anonymous unless you do something wrong, Any time you need something from headquarters, they ask your staff number, not your name,
Medical services are criminally bad. Your health insurance is provided by the employer HOWEVER you have to go to the clinic inside headquarters and Emirates employs all the doctors. This is a huge conflict of interest, They each have a budget they can spend on medical services for crew so they do not want to test you for anything, they are jaded because crew are sick a lot more than average people and they think we are all hypochondriacs, you also have to be "certified sick" meaning you have to come to the clinic and "prove" that you are sick enough to miss just one day of work- furthering the doctors perspective of crew being hypochondriacs because people have to fake it if they need to take one day off for a personal emergency, you cannot just go to the hospital, even if you are very ill and the clinic is closed, they will charge you unless they deem it was life threatening.
Legal working hours (flight time limitations) are not followed. I am from the United States where it is common to see a crew change because one crew has reached their legal working hours. I have only heard of this happening one time and it has never happened to me. I recently had a 17-hour work day, no rest- not a legal flight, but a manager told us to "suck it up."
You can also start your work at any time of day. In most countries, the airport closes between midnight at 6am. The Dubai airport has flights taking off allll night. Meaning you can start a 14-hour work day e.g. Washington D.C. flight at 0220 a.m. Some people can adjust to this schedule, other never do.
"Main Fleet v. 380"- this will soon become a thing of the past but for the next year, Emirates will still be operating 2 fleets of aircraft. Older aircraft that only do turnarounds to India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi... and a fleet of newer bigger aircrafts. I'm not sure if they are even hiring for the older aircrafts anymore, but main fleet does A LOT more turnaround flights (no layovers, no layover allowances and less flying hours.) As main fleet I would guess I made about 2/3 the salary for the same amount of work as A380 crew because they get more layovers meaning more flying hours (you are only paid after take off.)
You rarely work with the same people twice and people often do whatever is best for them because they have no loyalty to a crew of people they have never met before. They just do their work as fast as they can and don't help anyone else. This isn't always the case! of course, there are great crew, but I personally would love a little more accountability or to at least build a working relationship with some people.
Promotion is based mostly on staying power. If you are still there after a certain number of years and you haven't done anything terribly bad, you will get promoted. This is great if you actually have a passion for people, aviation, or are a decent human being. Often times, this means our supervisors are the people with the least options. This is a hard job and most people choose to move on after a few years. Once again, there are some truly amazing supervisors, but you often come across people who clearly had no other options than to stay in the company because they have no other skills (especially social ones.)
