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!

13.Mar.2008 : The Pilot-Less Airline Video

The Management/HR Airline of the Future.

Having got back mid afternoon from Chennai, somewhat exhausted since I did not sleep well before the 12 hour+ duty starting at 1:50 am that took me to the minima at the runway in low cloud and rain; I went to collect my car to find that the car that went in for a service, came out with a leaky radiator – replacement cost 2500 dhs and 5 days.

I ran round for a while, unsuccessfully looking for an alternative repair, then went home thinking of my bed and made my first serious mistake of the day. To ease myself into sleep, I put on the latest Emirates World video the company thoughtfully provided in my CBC box today.

I watched my way through what must have been two hours of insights into Ek, from very senior management, to specialist IT projects, the A380, the airport, the growth and the challenges ahead. As tired as I was, I was able to appreciate the fact that it was very well presented, engaging, interesting, thought provoking, no pilots.

This pilot didn't make it into the Movie.

Yes, that’s right, no pilots. Please forgive me, those hard working Emirates pilots who actually were in it (unknowingly) but I’m not going to count the pilots flying the planes in the various flight and taxi scenes (I presume there WERE pilots in those scenes and not some for of futuristic HR sponsored remote control deployment). Neither am I counting the two who were probably inside the box of the the outside view of the moving simulator scene (the two pilots cast for the inside-the-sim scenes were (a) a sim engineer; and (b) an FCTI with two single bar cadets under training). I’m also not counting the three classroom scenes with local cadets under training either, no offense.

Please note – I have done quite a bit of cadet training in my time, and enjoyed it thoroughly. They are keen, they are switched on, they are sponges for learning – it was a privilege teaching them and I consider the cadets a significant part of the future of Emirates, deserving of the significant effort and resources dedicated to their training and advancement - but the cadets I saw in the video today were brand new, under initial training – rather than the ones I brief with, fly with, work with out on the line, helping to build this company’s profitability like the all of us.

Neither did these two. And one of them's Management!

No – the only pilot I saw in the whole movie was at the very end, when a hand comes in from the right and shakes the hand of a DNATA checking staff employee – I zoomed in, I think it’s a BA uniform – it’s certainly not Ek.

Can I ask at this point – what have we done to deserve this? And what do we have to do to recover from that heinous act? Like all groups of humans – some pilots whinge, some pilots abscond, some pilots order lots of tickets and head off on a 10 bag layover (thanks Garrie for that bit of company history), but most of us go to work, do a good job, go home to our families and live our lives productively without doing excessive harm. A significant minority of us actually do a lot more, significantly saving or making for the company significant profits, expending effort on the company’s behalf in their own time, to the betterment of the other pilots, other employees, the company, the community at large. Many of us support worthwhile causes such as the Dhaka Project with our time, money and luggage allowance. You know who you are, so does The Company, whether it chooses to acknowledge you or not.

Not even WITH the Cabin Crew did this pilot make it into the Movie.

I don’t think we deserve the reputation we seem to have. This video is going out to thousands of employees, if not tens of thousands – and look at what they will see. There is check in staff, engineers, cabin crew, lots of cabin crew, senior, very senior, middle and occasionally junior management, cabin crew, hotel staff, cleaners, sim techs, station staff, more cabin crew, software engineers, loaders, red caps, truck drivers, did I mention cabin crew?; bus drivers – the list is endless, they are all there, they are all readily identifiable in their roles and that they are doing their bit for this company. I think we deserve a measure of that respect, whatever the perceptions are about how hard we work (or supposedly don’t work), how many days we have off, how much we’re paid, how glamorous our life appears to be. Is that too much to ask? What can be done – and where was Flight Operations in this video?

You would thing putting this guy in would have been a no-brainer ...

I am now very tired, writing this now is very bad idea, and I’m going to bed.

Next Week : I begin looking at the process of sending out stuff back to Australia, which brings me into contact with the dreaded FrightWorx (Freight Works).