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!

11.Apr.2008 : Garage Sale.

Today we had the first Garage Sale. We advertised two days before on the dumpsters up and down the street. Although we’d put 9 am on the ad – the door bell started ringing at 8am. When I went out there at nine, there was 50+ people crammed up against the gate wanting to come in. It was Mad. The dealers had of coursed pushed their way to the front.

We let in a few at a time. You aren’t going to sell anything significant at a garage sale here – mostly it’s housemaids, drivers, gardeners, etc. Dealers will snap up computer stuff even if (especially if) they have no idea what it is. I had LOT of that. I took great delight in explaining in detail what each piece of esoteric computer equipment that I’ve bought and never used was.

“Oh yes, this is a PCMCIA card that will allow you to connect a 2.5 inch IDE hard drive to your laptop.”

The cables, Oh, the cables.

We set up boxes of 1 Dhs, 5 Dhs, 10 Dhs and 20 Dhs items, and a table of some of the more expensive items Meg had to sale. It was a bit manic for a while but eventually settled down and took about 400 dhs from the sale. Beware – I had a friend who made about 400 dhs from her sale, and lost an 800 dhs pair of sun glasses.

We’ll have one more before Meg leaves on the 4th, I think – and then I’ll have to have some sort of fire sale (probably involving an actual fire) after I get back from Singapore Melbourne of the rest and the furniture that hasn’t sold.

15.Apr.2008 : Freight Quotes.

I’ve had my three quotes and as expected, Door to Port was just about the Ek maximum, and Door to Door was well in excess. Actual quotes range from 19,000 (FrightWorks) up to 35,000 (Some one reputable).

The next step is to send the three quotes into HR. They will e-mail back, copy the finance department, and setup the processes so that when the selected company (Allied Pickfords) bills Emirates for the 18,500 Dhs, Ek will pay. At the same time I will need to go to Allied and pay the rest – just after we move. By this time I won’t have a credit card or bank to get the money from, so it will have to come from Oz.

It seems the full cargo allowance for pilots is available from 5 years in the company. The actual amount is depending on your home port country. Australia is 18,500. the Gulf would be 6,000.

Early in May, Meg and the kids are passengering home to Melbourne for the last time. On the 3rd, I’m operating EK404 DXB-SIN-MEL. You’d think it would be a simple thing to get their tickets changed to a one day stopover in Singapore, but it’s not. It’s not the two sectors, it’s not the day stopover with associated charges, it’s changing a ticket after it’s issued. They offered I could use the ticket DXB-SIN and purchase a Cat C SIN-MEL for each of them. How generous! From previous experience, the ticket can be changed (after all, it’s just an e-ticket) but it requires line manager approval – I’ve asked Patricia – she’s looking into it, but I’m not hopeful.

P.S: I’m still waiting for the letter from HR to Mashreqbank that will allow me to pay out my loan early without penalty – I’m about to escalate.

Next Week : I write a letter to Sir Maurice Flanagan. Why not.