Dubai's Emirates airline is hiring: Here's the salary you can earn

Emirates cabin crew

Massive recruitment drive in 30 cities as airline moves closer to full operations

Emirates airline is on a recruitment drive to hire cabin crew in 30 cities worldwide. Under the latest programme, which will conclude in June, Emirates’ teams will travel from Australia to the UK, and dozens of European cities in between, as well as Cairo, Algiers, Tunis and Bahrain.

"There’s no more exciting airline than Emirates for anyone interested in a flying career, and we’ve received tremendous interest since we began our recruitment drive for cabin crew in November,” said Abdulaziz Al Ali, Emirates Group’s Executive Vice President for Human Resources.

"While parts of the application process are done online, we always make the effort to meet our candidates in person whenever we can, and that is why our talent acquisition team is doing a whirlwind 30-city tour over the next 6 weeks to assess prospective candidates."

Estimated payscale

According to Salaryexplorer, a flight attendant in UAE typically earns around Dh13,100 per month. Salaries range from Dh6,440 to Dh20,500. This is the average monthly salary including housing, transport, and other benefits.

A flight attendant with less than two years of experience makes approximately Dh7,630 per month, while someone with two- to five-years experience can expect to earn more than Dh9,000. A candidate who has spent between 5-10 years in the industry can land a salary of Dh13,500 per month.

As of May 16, Emirates airline was operating more than 1 million seats, compared to about 452,000 seats a year earlier, according to OAG, an aviation consultancy. Emirates and other UAE-based airlines had announced hiring plans in mid-2021 anticipating a recovery in air travel demand.

BACK AT WORKFORCE EXPANSION

Due to recruitment drives held last year, the Emirates Group’s total workforce stood at 85,219 as of March 2022, up 13 per cent from a year earlier.

“This year, we focused on restoring our operations quickly and safely wherever pandemic-related restrictions eased across our markets,” said Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum, Chairman and CEO, Emirates Airline and Group, in a statement late last week. “Business recovery picked up the pace, particularly in the second-half of the year. Robust customer demand drove a huge improvement in our financial performance compared to our unprecedented losses of last year and we built up our strong cash balance."

Slashing capacity

Emirates’ announcement comes as airlines in the UK and US struggle with crippling staff shortages. British Airways has reportedly reduced its flight schedules this summer. The UK airline plans to cut 10 per cent of its flight schedules between March and October, due to a staff shortage, according to a Financial Times report.

UK-based low-cost airline easyjet has announced a 1,000-pound bonus for cabin crew that work through the summer season matching a recent British Airways offer for new recruits. Several US airlines are also trimming their summer schedules as they struggle to meet the recent spike in air travel demand with current staff levels.

“Today, our (the aviation industry’s) biggest challenge is the availability of resources across the network, be it the frontline workers or ground handling staff,” said Adel Al Redha, Emirates airlines’ chief operating officer, during a media event last week.

“We're in a better position than many other countries because of the accessibility of resources,” said Al Redha.