I'm talking about FA's. Which is probably the cheapest (per monthly salary) personal that EK has.

I do not see a single number aside from the year 1970...

Are you able to substantiate your claims?

Do you consider DNATA to be part of EK?

Do you really think that people in handling earn more than flight attendants?

I thought DXB-based EK lounge agents (food and beverage) are on the lowest pay. Baggage handlers are NOT EK staff.

Do you mean that they do not work for Emirates, but the Emirates Group?

Or is the company they are working for an affiliate of DNATA? ;)

But they all work for a company owned by persons, who also own Dubai, the Emirates Group, the airline, the airport...

Again, before anyone cries foul or assumes that those guys schlepping bags in Dubai in summer will be able to buy themselves a mansion in Zurich, Lucerne or Geneva from all the savings they accumulated, it is quite normal in this industry and Dubai Airport, DNATA and the Emirates Group are mostly copying efforts by the Dutch or Austrian Government, during the days when they owned most of the aviation infrastructure... ;)

DNATA is not part of EK. We're not talking about (generic) airport services in DXB, which all airlines can profit from, but only EK specific issues. And no, ground handling probably earns less than EK FA's.

Of course I can..

http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/articl...Lufthansa.html

Lufthansa: Die Grundvergütung beträgt für Berufsanfänger seit 2009 rund 1533 Euro

1533€ (netto) - you can calculate yourself how much that means on your pay check, you know yourself that there isn't that much Brutto left of your Netto in Germany.. then you can deduct all those lovely things like transportation to work, a flat, food.. and you'll see you can hardly put anything aside apart from the mandatory savings that will be decucted from your income for your Rente (pension) - you know yourself that with such a low income, you can forget about having a pension big enough to allow you anything above what you get with Hartz4..

Emirates: Beim immer stärker werdenden Lufthansa-Rivalen Emirates sind viele Flugbegleiter zwischen 80 und 100 Blockstunden im Monat im Einsatz. Dafür wird aber zum Beispiel kostenlos eine Wohnung gestellt. Die Airline sucht aktuell 4500 neue Flugbegleiter, die älter als 21 Jahre sind zu einem Grundgehalt von umgerechnet knapp 850 Euro. Jede geflogene Stunde wird dann aber noch einmal mit 11,50 Euro bezahlt. Ein Berufsanfänger, der viel unterwegs ist, verdient in den Emiraten also schnell rund 2000 Euro plus Zulagen – steuerfrei.

In English: Base income of 850€, + 11.5€ per hour flown (usually around 80-100 hours per month), making it roughly 2000€ per month, including free accommodation, no taxes.

Given most stuff is paid, I would expect that any FA which isn't splurging around can manage to keep 1500€ a month. Not that bad, saving 18.000€ a year.

So under the bottom line, why do people do not leave LH to fly for EK?

Free accomodation, no taxes, no job guarantee, no social security, very limited health coverage, no pension... sounds indeed very lucrative for people from certain parts of the world.

A net salary incl. very good health coverage, very good company bonus items, amazing per diem allowances (pushing the net salary) , pension benefits, a job guarantee incl. guaranteed promotions, social security, more than a dozen hourly schemes...

Really surprising that people do not leave LH for EK. :D

Uri, again, try to look beyond what mainstream journalists and certain groups having an agenda are saying in order to understand the industry.

And could you please explain the holding structure of the Emirates Group to us?

Also free transport, food for most of the time, comprehensive health cover, profit sharing (not sure if this applies down to FA level but pursers do get in), education for children (or partially covered).

Not an accurate generalisation about a cabin crew pool from 170+ nationalities. Also the contract stipulates a month pay for every year of service upon termination, so that's pension covered. Health is comprehensively covered. Social security does not apply here because it's NOT part of the airline's responsibility. Job guarantee, now that's a first.

Many actually do*.. those that don't have that strong urge to stay in their homeland (quite some Germans do have that) and don't mind "foreign" areas are leaving for jobs at EK (and other ME carriers) as they realize they can make more savings there in a few years that they could in Germany in their lifetime (including pensions, yes!)

You are obviously free to ignore the facts like the OP of this very thread, it will keep this thread very enjoyable for the other readers, who were close to disappointment when the original OP noted us that he "doesn't have time to talk anymore" :D

*or better said, start work with EK, and not LH.. those that are with LH for a long time - as discussed already - do have (too good) salaries, those that are fresh have too bad ones..

Someone I know, an EK flight purser has been with EK for 14 years. He not only works as cabin crew but also has a second capacity with the airline when not flying (cannot disclose this) but gets paid extra for that. He lives in a decent house around DXB, 3 kids in private int'l schools fully paid (one is going to uni soon, tuition covered by EK).

He gets for himself AND family health cover and yearly travel tickets back home, plus the typical ID tickets. Also gets into that profit sharing I mentioned earlier. His wife runs a home business on a part-time basis (only started couple years ago after she has been a stay home mum). Over the years, they managed to buy a house down under outright, and an apartment in DXB as an investment. This is definitely something that he would have struggled with as a loan if he was say employed by QF or LH, and would have necessitated that his wife worked a full job.

From the above it's clear EK do offer career progression to cabin staff who are well remunerated with extra bells and whistles. Meanwhile decades of union actions for many legacy carriers have failed to guarantee the continued employment of staff, let alone all those extras that they can only dream of. I'm not trying to sell EK as a role model, merely pointing out that some of the views advanced by FD1971 may be flawed.

The original point Uri was trying to make included some cumbersome arguments. With him, it is always difficult to figure out the point he is trying to make, so I guess he wanted to point out that LH has issues finding FAs, whereas EK has not, mostly due to a higher salary.

The exact same point was used by good, old Anti, when he tried to lure away pilots from OS after LH played hardball. A few weeks later he paddled back and not too many pilots left OS anyway. For the old original Tyrolean, the story was a bit different. Even a senior purser on EK earned more in comparison to a FO flying the CRJ's there.

Under the bottom line, it is simply not lucrative at all to move from a classic European mainline airline job to Emirates, simply because people earn 'more' working for the European legacy carriers. FAs working for the NE3 are at the very bottom of the industry status-wise, way below their European mainline counterparts, but still above the European LCCs and feeder airlines.

Hence, it is not surprising that people flying for Air Dolomiti or Team Alitalia might be interested, people flying for LH, OS or LX, AF, BA or KL mainline are not, hence it is not surprising that EK struggles to find (qualified) people flying, especially for the left seat and more senior FA positions.

Of course, EK would love to have that talent, but the offers are simply not lucrative enough.

But so far, EK has been able to find enough people willing to work for them, but their recruitment grounds are usually not in Western Europe and the mainline carriers with a few exceptions of people who were in a one way street like some pilots who were in danger of losing their licence or people like Anti.

But we are losing track of the original discussion.

Anyway, the special ways of running operations at EK is part of camouflaging their true financial results...like we know from Europe over the last decades.

It's just you having problems to understand.. apparently everyone else clearly knew what I am saying - which was quite clearly NOT that LH has any trouble to find staff, especially not FAs..

Old staff - not just old by age but also old by working for the same company for a long time - will always be less interested in changing, that's a known fact and has little if nothing to do with the airline industry..

You keep your fingers in your ears and sing la-la-la-la, ignoring all the facts presented by everyone so far, right? It's NOT lucrative for a FA that started long time ago working for LH (or the other legacies), but it's VERY lucrative for some fresh FAs..

I've to admit it, I've never heard anyone being that talented about presenting facts in the complete opposite way. Or maybe I did, the Iraqi information minister a few minutes before the GIs reached Baghdad..


That's why I've routinely 25%+ of FAs which are from western Europe on my EK flights.. (even on Non-European destinations)

Thanks for filling in for the original OP, you're trully a worthy replacement :D ^

I just love those single examples.

In a world economy where free movement and more or less full freedom of establishment is becoming more and more common, the war for talent is ongoing as pointed out by McK already decades ago.

This is resulting in increasing 'legacy costs' for airlines like EK, but also for simple production workers in China, hence their relative competiveness decreases, a point quite often overlooked by mainstream journalists.

The idea of having people work in two capacities has been supported by Lufthansa since decades by the way, so we find a lot of pilots working in management as well these days, probably one of the reasons why people want to work for LH in the first place.

The subsidies paid by the Dubai Government have been well established in this thread already, free housing provided by the Government is just one example. The question whether this is part of the financial scam EK runs is up to everyone to decide, but it is not uncommon in Europe to receice tax benefits as a foreigner working in a different country, even with the EU those bennies apply. Companies also provide free housing, but normally this is not paid by the Government.

The last comments underline beautifully the Government subsidies EK utilizes to put DXB on the map, the relatively simple question whether one part of Dubai, the airline Emirates, runs a financially clean operation is not really sooo important on the grand scale.

A newly hired Swedish FA working for EK for three years can have earned sufficient money for a down payment to buy a house in the US costing $500,000; but if the same person worked for SAS as a newly hired FA working for SAS and having to support himself or herself in Sweden, then the FA wouldn't able to do that.