As I wrote about earlier, Emirates Airline reported a record $2.9 billion profit for the past financial year. The airline is recognizing this by rewarding employees in a pretty unprecedented way…
In this post:
100,000+ Emirates employees get huge bonuses
Emirates has historically offered profit sharing to employees when the airline has a good year. However, there’s no consistent formula to this, and it’s at the discretion of the company’s executives. With the airline having done so well the past financial year, employees are being rewarded in an exceptional way.
The Dubai-based airline has announced that all employees of the company will be getting a bonus equal to 24 weeks worth of salary. Yes, that means all Emirates employees will be getting nearly a 50% bonus on their salaries.
Historically when Emirates has performed well, the airline has offered employees bonuses equal to several weeks worth of salary. For example, for the 2017-2018 financial year, the airline offered employees bonuses equal to five weeks worth of pay. Meanwhile in 2018-2019, profits decreased by 69%, and employees didn’t get any bonus. As you’d expect, there also wasn’t much profit sharing during the pandemic.
I can’t think of any airline that has ever offered employees profit sharing making up such a large percentage of their salary. Here in the United States, Delta is best known for its profit sharing scheme. The company’s formula is to share 10% of its first $2.5 billion of annual profits, and 20% of its annual profits in excess of that. For example, in 2019, that amounted to nearly 17% of employees’ salaries. Even that pales in comparison to what Emirates is now offering its staff.
This is really great to see from Emirates
Gulf carriers are often vilified for their employment practices. While I think some criticisms are warranted, Emirates usually does a pretty job taking care of employees, and this is a clear reflection of that. Even without a union or collective bargaining agreement, it’s possible for a company to be generous with staff.
I don’t think any Emirates employees were expecting profit sharing equal to nearly 50% of their salary, and I’m sure this will do a lot to help morale at the airline, given what a rough few years it has been for employees in the industry. I’d expect employees to be especially happy over the coming days.
So many Emirates employees live in Dubai, while their families are back home in the country they’re originally from. Often the Emirates staff are bread winners for their whole family, so getting this kind of a bonus will make a material difference in their lives.
Bottom line
Emirates reported a record profit of $2.9 billion, and the airline is celebrating that by offering employees profit sharing that’s equal to 24 weeks of salary. After a rough few years for the industry, this is a nice reward for a lot of hard working employees.
What do you make of Emirates’ massive bonus for employees?
That’s a happy company which makes their employees HAPPY too to go for a work. Not like Qatar Airways who TORTURE their employees and for hard work giving NOTHING! Emirates is MUCH MUCH better!!!!
unfortunately dnata (emirates group )from amsterdam netherlands did not receive the promised bonus, is there a reason for that? Was the sheikh's promise not true?
Love to he airline very gracious of owner's and shareholders to take care of their staff .
Spoil yourself and families.
Viva Emirates
It would be nice if they rewarded loyal customers with lower prices.
Sometimes it's good just to be happy for somebody else and not think of yourself. I'm glad on behalf of all of the hard working Emirates staff.
exept in Ams!
Well done emirates. To other airlines I hope you will emulate what emirates has done and follow suite.
That’s a great way to have the workers do a. Better job that shows that there boss cares about them
Qantas does not give staff bonuses anymore
They give them a better staff travel boarding priority
As a QANTAS staff member I would love to know about this better travel boarding priority? :-)
long live Emirates Airline ...we are thankful and very happy
SMH….it’s an airline ffs
Sometimes it's good just to be happy for somebody else and not think of yourself. I'm glad on behalf of all of the hard working Emirates staff.
I’m happy for all my former coworkers… they’ve earned this several times over… it does in no way warrant “long live Emirates Airline”….. again it’s an airline not a king!
The cargo division of EVA Air had record profit in 2021 and 2022. As a result, the company paid employees year-end bonus worth of 35 weeks and 37 weeks of salary in those two years.
Qatar Airways was the only airline operating during Covid, at that time crew were giving 30% of the salary to the company as solidarity which was not given back and somehow it’s the year the company had the most profit.
The official sponsor of the world cup
No bonus no salary increment.
5 stars airline
"Qatar Airways was the only airline operating during Covid"
Nonsense.
They make their profit by taking money from people who book flights then cant fly because the world went crazy but they keep almost half the price of the airfare. Then when the flight can be taken that person has to then pay more for the flight to cover what they lost. It’s theft really.
Let's not forget the beginning of COVID......
Emirates invited a hundred people at a time for a 'meeting' in a conference room and told them en masse they were sacked and being put on a flight home.
They can keep their 24wk bonus.
Other airlines did the same thing, to stay at the subject, Lufthansa-Group airlines even tried to lay off very high seniority personel by simply closing there airlines or telling others that they are not needed anymore or a limited or a bi-annual contract.
Also made huge profits in 2023 and 2022 so far, BUT there employees (who some work for a minimum salery) did get N O T H I N G, all the profit...
Other airlines did the same thing, to stay at the subject, Lufthansa-Group airlines even tried to lay off very high seniority personel by simply closing there airlines or telling others that they are not needed anymore or a limited or a bi-annual contract.
Also made huge profits in 2023 and 2022 so far, BUT there employees (who some work for a minimum salery) did get N O T H I N G, all the profit was shared with stock holders.
Therefore, EK is BY FAR the better airline in this case and in many other ways of the aviation world too!
Emirates tried to stay in the air for as long as possible on many routes, while other airlines stopped flying already and simply left booked passengers stranded!
So compare apples with apples and pigs with pigs.
So Lufthansa invited staff for an 'update' at a hotel conference room and announced to them gathered as a group 60/70 at a time that they were dismissed?
Oh, that's news to me. Dreadful.
STEFFL,
They didn’t keep flying because they wanted to. They HAD to, have you ever been to Dubai? The only way that city eats is through the cargo holds of those wide bodies…..they were flying passenger birds with the seats ripped out and flight attendants pulling “fire watch” in the cabin just to keep the city alive. I worked there for 5 years, truly a dreadful employer…..but they sure do PR good!
While this is great it's not quite as amazing as you might think. The bonus only relates to the 'basic' salary component which is a very minor part of their wage and what is used for end of service benefit calculations (kind of pension cash when you leave of 1 month per yr of basic for total service yrs) so kept minimal by all employers on purpose. Housing allowance, flying hrs, travel allowance, spending allowance...
While this is great it's not quite as amazing as you might think. The bonus only relates to the 'basic' salary component which is a very minor part of their wage and what is used for end of service benefit calculations (kind of pension cash when you leave of 1 month per yr of basic for total service yrs) so kept minimal by all employers on purpose. Housing allowance, flying hrs, travel allowance, spending allowance etc make up their real total salary. For a cabin supervisor this 6month bonus of basic equates to about $10k.
Not everyone in the airline is Cabin Crew!
As a captain, the 24 weeks equates to nearly 300,000 AED ($80k).
For that to be true, the basic salary for a Captain should have been AED50k per month, which is not the case (it is far lower).
The basic salary range is large and depends on pay points. Some get less, some get more. But yes 50k is towards the top end of the scale.
Great airline. Similar to Flydubai who also gave multiple months of profit share and paid back all the salaries they withdrew during covid. Seems like the best airlines in the world to work for are in the Uae
Did they really?
It's also worth mentioning that the senior leadership receives multipliers on their bonus payouts. The rumor is that VPs receive 3x and SVPs receive 5x of the announced payout. In my opinion, that is gross over-compensation but that's in the hands of their ownership. I can only dream of what a 120-week bonus would look like for a SVP at Emirates! I'm curious if there will be a lot of leadership team members retiring based on that significant payout?
Luxembourg based Cargolux Airlines payed a high profit shares last year and this year. The philosophy however is to pay the same fixed profit share to every employee irrelevant to the position within the company. This resulted in many cases to exceed one ore two annual gross salaries .
Great gesture but Emirates is owned by the UAE government with a seemingly unlimited runway of money. This is a drop in the bucket for them. And good PR obviously. BTW, Delta has profit sharing for lower level employees, not just management.
EKs bonus is not just for management but for all employees
Meanwhile in the US, profit sharing remains strictly for useless upper management.
Oh good, another "CEOs/C-suite dont do anything but network and go to a few meetings" person.
I'm never in favor of golden parachutes or incentives for the management of poorly performing companies, but people who continually think that upper management don't work hard or are no more valuable than lower/middle level employees who are usually very replaceable in the job market (not speaking on them as humans, but their actual roles) are just detached from reality.
Bob, perhaps you choose to stick with a crappy employer and complain rather than look for anything better, but don't assume all employers are like that because they aren't. One of the things I look for in a potential employer is profit sharing (if established) or stock options (if a startup), and no I'm not a manager.
Some other airlines who think they're worth a 5* rating should have also invested into there employees instead of there sharholders or a questionable airline rating / research company in the UK.
Some companies just know, what's important to deliver the BEST of service all around to there paying customers!
Others definitely DON'T!
Well done EK
EK hasn’t paid out nearly like this in over a decade
I’m a flight attendant with the airline in the United States that has a profit sharing formula …I’m so grateful for this and although it’s not the job it was when I was hired in the 80’s….I still love it and am glad to see this airline reward it’s hard working employees….
How about those employees with final warning? Are they gonna receive the same bonus? They deserve to be given as well..
Union leaders are figuring how to twist a 24-week bonus into a bad thing.
But raising union dues is a good thing.
Nah, union leaders are probably thinking "How can we get this as well?"
ALPA did well for Delta pilots. Most employees prefer a guaranteed pay increase to Emirates eratic profit sharing plan.
All I know is being a union pilot at a major or legacy carrier in the US is far superior in QOL and overall compensation to being a pilot at Emirates regardless of their profit sharing this year.
Take note Alan Joyce.
That's pretty amazing.
Well done, Emirates!
Happy employees make for happy shareholders, amirite?! :)