Leaving an International Airline, Leaving the Middle East

Two years ago last week I left Dubai and Emirates (the airline) after 12 years, to come home and help with the launch of V Australia. This series of posts documents the leaving process - partly as my first attempt at a blog (which hopefully someone will find worth reading), partly as an assistance to others in my position. While this blog should provide some amusement, it should also be of assistance if you are leaving soon as well. There will be differences however - a lot of this depends on your years of service, and I'm sure some things have changed - hopefully for the better!

During those 12 years I flew the Airbus 310-300, Airbus 300-600R and Boeing 777 200/300/300ER. I was an FO, a Captain and Training Captain. I worked in management as a technical pilot, and worked on (and for a short time ran) a IT project for a Training Management System/Learning Management System/Content Management System development. I flew 4 sectors days of flights of less than 15 minutes and ultra long haul multi crew flights of 17 hours and longer. I flew to Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America – as well as a variety of Middle East and Mediterranean destinations. I benefited enormously from the best a well funded training system has to offer – and suffered significantly from it’s capriciousness (and that of airline management) as well. I learned my trade from the best (and possibly the worst) aviation had to offer, and hopefully passed some of that (better) knowledge on as an Instructor, in both the aircraft and simulator.

My wife and I brought a young child to Dubai, and she gave birth to two more kids while we were there. We were involved in both the expatriate and local communities and saw the best and the worst such a community had to offer. Dubai was home for many years – and the only home my kids had even known.

But the leaving process was something else.

I knew at the time from others it would be an “interesting” experience. I knew it would make interesting reading, and so I documented the process. I also made some summary notes to assist those who follow out of Emirates and Dubai.

What will come to follow this post is that blog, with a link to the summary notes as well. Two years is enough time I suspect to separate myself from those events. If you’ve never lived as an expatriate, if you’ve never left that environment, if you’ve never left one airline for another, if you’ve never resigned from a job – then what is to come might not entertain you as much as if you had.