Leaving Emirates the airline

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!

16.Mar.2008 : 45 Days?

As previously discussed, any tickets ordered from Staff Travel during your notice period must be paid for in cash at EGHQ, in person. Of course when you go to actually do this, you find out that you can actually pay with a credit card. OK fine.

So when my father said to me this morning that Mum wanted one last ticket MEL-DXB-MAN, we decided that he would come with me to EGHQ and pay for the ticket, prior to him catching the 2:30 pm Manchester flight. I had previously bought a significant amount of tickets for one last family of five holiday to New York, significantly burdening our Australian credit card. I wasn’t eager to do that again.

So we travelled to EGHQ, finally found a park (really looking forward to trying to do that when the place is more than half full – oh wait, I won’t be here then, Ha Ha Ha!) and went to Staff Travel.

I TRIPS’d a ticket and then lined up. Service was it’s usually quickness and fifty five minutes later I was explaining to the guy why I was down there to pay for a Cat A ticket for my mother in cash/credit – because I was in my notice period.

Then he tells me that in fact, because I was not within 45 days of my resignation date – salary deduction was still available to me. How wonderful it would have been to have known THAT three weeks previous.

In fact, not only did I now not have to pay on credit card for the ticket – I can’t pay on credit card, because salary deduction is available. When I asked him why just a week before I had been forced to pay on the credit card for 8000 dhs of JFK tickets for my family and I, he shrugged – I am not knowing, Captain.

I will attempt to verify, but it appears that HR tell you one thing, Staff Travel operate to different rules – but it depends on who from Staff Travel you strike on the day!

Jesus it would be great if someone would write all this shit down so that those coming after could at least know what’s going on and what they do and don’t have to do. Oh hang on – that’s me. Great.

Next Week : I begin to look at selling the bits of my life I can’t or don’t want to take back Home. Also I have a last run in with the Car Repair Agencies of Dubai. They’re kind of like the Central Intelligence Agency, without the Intelligence. Or the Central. But they are out to get me.