Is there no stopping Emirates? Just over a year after the global financial crisis dashed the Dubai dream, and with network carriers around the world battling losses, the region's biggest airline has in recent weeks announced record net profits of $964 million, an order for 32 more Airbus A380s and plans to hire 700 pilots and 3,000 cabin crew over the next 18 months.
Emirates' performance over the past 12 months has been gravity-defying. With new routes and more to be added this year, its weekly departures from Dubai International are up more than a tenth to 1,118 from June 2009.
The economic crunch caused a relative blip in Emirates' relentless recruitment last year - in the 12 months to 31 March 2009 it took on just 140 pilots. "We didn't need them but we honoured their contracts," says Capt Alan Stealey, Emirates divisional senior vice-president flight operations. Now the airline is almost back to 2007-08 hiring levels and the tempo is increasing.
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"This financial year has been a year of two halves," he says, referring to the period to 31 March 2010. "In the second half we saw a pronounced recovery, we used our backlog of pilots up and now we are recruiting at full pace for the current year."
Current pilot numbers are 2,282, of which 1,127 are captains. With up to 45 pilots needed every month, Emirates is stepping up its recruitment efforts with a target of talking to 32 individuals a week.
The airline recently held a recruitment roadshow in Madrid - to which it will launch services in August - and Stealey says pilots from recently failed or downsizing airlines, including Flyglobespan and SAS, are providing a pool of potential recruits.
As with every Gulf employer, providing careers for nationals is a priority. With 38 captains, 116 first officers and 36 cadet pilots from the airline's UAE citizens-only training programme, Emiratis account for 8% of flightcrew. With a further 142 students going through an ab initio programme, locals should fill some of the recruitment gap.
Emirates currently only recruits first officers, regardless of experience, with minimum requirements being 4,000h of which 2,000h must be multi-engine. However, despite a seniority list, promotion tends to be rapid.
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