It’s been nearly an entire year since Emirates reopened recruitment for new cabin crew and since that time the airline has held hundreds of Open Day’s around the world. Emirates even trialled a brand new but short-lived recruitment process and partnered with a specialist aviation recruitment agency as it attempted to fill a massive hole in its cabin crew workforce. But as we fast approach 2019, has Emirates finally hired enough cabin crew?
We ask that question because as many eager candidates will no doubt already have already noticed, the number of Open Day’s currently advertised on the official Emirates recruitment website has suddenly dwindled to a mere handful. As it stands, there aren’t any Open Day’s organised for January 2019 and normally we’d expect preliminary Open Day information published at least a month in advance.
As it stands, Emirates is still accepting online applications. By submitting an online application, candidates can expect to be shortlisted and then invited to an Invitation Only event – although it’s not clear whether recruiters have any such events in the pipeline at the moment.
There’s also the chance to apply through OSM Aviation – they are a specialist aviation recruitment agency based in Oslo who were hired by Emirates in the Summer to assist in the recruitment process. However, OSM Aviation has only been holding recruitment events in a handful of countries, including parts of Scandinavia and Spain so this application route might not necessarily be appropriate for the vast majority of candidates.
If Emirates does plan to suspend cabin crew recruitment then it will be a massive change of direction for the airline. In October, we learned that the airline was around 800 cabin crew short of the level it expected to be at and that was at a time that so many existing crew were nearing the end of their contracts that a resignation waitlist had been implemented.
Emirates was forced to suspend cabin crew recruitment for nearly a year during 2017 after a downturn in the airline’s fortunes, including high profile incidents including the so-called “laptop ban” imposed by U.S. authorities. Business has picked up since then, although senior executives have warned of potential headwinds on the horizon, including fluctuations in key currency markets and the current high price of oil.
Unfortunately, Emirates wouldn’t be drawn on whether cabin crew recruitment would continue in 2019. Generally speaking, we’ve traditionally seen the Summer months to be the busiest for new recruit ab-initio training with a natural lull during the Winter. It could well be that the start of 2019 is following this timeline and that we’ll see a trickle of Open Day’s advertised in the next few weeks.
Find out where Emirates has upcoming Open Day’s in our Step-by-Step recruitment guide.
