Emirates Cabin Crew - When will recruitment return?

Many of you reading this are wondering when will recruitment return. Let me bring you back to a year ago, Feb 2020 to be absolutely precise, most airlines started winding down their fleets, reducing flights as Covid raged from epidemic to pandemic status. It was one of the most saddest months in history where aviation slowly came to a full standstill by the end of February. Large aircrafts were even seen parked in the deserts in the Middle East and in Australia, not knowing when they will fly again. Then there were spades of massive redundancies and airlines suffered cash drain, and some had to be subsidised by the governments. It was a really bad time for aviation and hospitality.

The first lockdowns imposed by many countries appeared to work, and as we approached mid-summer last year, cases dropped, and a third of the flights re-started amidst rigorous COVD-19 testing, wearing of masks, social distancing and negative PCR tests. Most countries were still discouraging travel and have their borders shut to unnecessary travel and most governments implemented 14 day quarantine measures. Then, as we came into the winter season, there was another surge in cases in several countries in Europe, and looked like we were hit by the second wave of the pandemic. That came as a setback as we were awaiting vaccine approval by the regulatory authorities. Then, good news came as one by one of the pharmaceutical companies started announcing the release of the COVID-19 vaccines. As we made logistic arrangements for the shipment of the vaccines across the globe, UK, South Africa and Brazil are hit by three new variants of the COVID virus. Some countries imposed further travel restrictions from the citizens of these countries.

So come Feb 2021, a year on and where are we now? Well, about 20% of people in most countries have received their first of the two doses of the COVID vaccine. We expect the vaccine rollout and people getting inoculated to continue through most of this year. With some production of vaccines in question, we hope this gets resolved in a couple of months and we can then expect a timeline where 70% of the population gets inoculated by the end of 2021.

As we see it, Emirates is one of the first global airlines to reinstate travel to destinations around the world albeit at less than 40% capacity on most routes and deployed some of their current cabin crew and pilots. The management at Emirates remains positive and optimistic about aviation returning soon. A slight setback was encountered when covid cases rose sharply in Dubai shortly after Christmas / New Year. UK decided to remove Dubai from the air bridge in late Jan 2021, and banned all direct flights to and from Dubai at the end of January.

We now know that the three new strains are adequately covered by the vaccines currently in production, the efficacy rate may be a little lower for these new strains but are assured that it should at least in theory prevent hospitalisations and deaths. We will see flights continue to increase at marginal rates across the world with increases in loads on popular destinations. This is a good sign. With vaccine rollout, more people hopefully receiving the jabs, and increased PCR testing and new methodology developed by major city airports. we remain confident that air travel will slowly return this year. It is very unlikely to reach anywhere near pre-pandemic levels but we are convinced that good process will be made as we approach towards the second half of 2021.

We can expect existing cabin crew at most airlines to see their rostered flights increase as we approach summer this year with even flights added as we get to autumn. It is still very much the “new normal”. What about recruitment of new cabin crew for global airlines? At best, we can expect to see small pockets of recruitment returning in the second half of the year but no mass recruitments that were seen prior to the pandemic.

What is the advice you will give to those dreaming about being an Emirates cabin crew? Our advice is get your CV tailored to the Emirates cabin crew requirements and ensure you keep your work experience history up to date. Remember to practice on what you have done during this period in the pandemic. We can see all airlines asking this question when recruitment returns.

Will future Emirates cabin crew recruitment be more competitive? Yes, it will be as there will be less capacity available for new entrants and we will have an even larger supply of people eager for the role. Best advice here is to ensure you tailor your current skills and experience to what Emirates requires. The focus on getting your CV tailored to the Emirates cabin crew requirements is even more important now that ever before. Write your Emirates cabin crew CV to ensure it is both ATS and human friendly. Initial selections will be performed by the Artificial Intelligence system. If you need more advice and further assistance on how to write your CV and word your skills to ensure it gets selected by ATS, we can help you with writing and even updating your current CV to the new Emirates cabin crew CV (post pandemic). Yes, the ATS selection tool is likely to have slight variations to it and even checks to see that you have mentioned some keywords of how you utilise and manage your time in the pandemic.

Talk to us today about your post pandemic Emirates cabin crew CV.