Emirates to hire 20,000 extra crew, engineers and airport staff

• COO: ‘No difficulties in recruiting’
• 50,000 employees in UAE
• Global staff shortages in aviation

Emirates Airline is recruiting 20,000 more operational staff in the next five years as it prepares to receive hundreds of new aircraft.

The Dubai flag carrier is looking for additional pilots, cabin crew, engineers, technicians and airport staff, Adel Al Redha, its deputy president and chief operations officer, said in a media roundtable on Wednesday.

The Emirates hiring push, which comes as many airlines are grappling with staff shortages, will exclude IT and administrative roles.

The commercial aviation industry will require 660,000 new pilots, 710,000 new maintenance technicians and 1 million new cabin crew members over the next 20 years, according to a report from plane maker Boeing.

However, Al Redha said recruitment remained manageable for the airline.

“In all honesty, I keep hearing this story, but I don’t experience it in Emirates,” he said. “There are no difficulties in securing and recruiting for these jobs so far.”

Emirates has almost 70,000 employees worldwide, according to its 2024-25 annual report. Employee costs increased by 17 percent to AED19 billion ($5.2 billion) in 2024-25.

John Grant, a partner at Midas Aviation and AGBI columnist, said the 20,000 hiring target was “realistic” but questioned the price the airline would have to pay to keep attracting staff.

“Operating costs for Emirates and others are going to increase significantly, I suspect, in the next five years as well,” he said.

Postings on the Emirates careers site suggest the average monthly pay for cabin crew is AED11,244 while pilots’ salaries start at AED32,100 for a first officer or AED48,000 for a captain, based on an average of 85 flying hours.

Emirates is increasing headcount as its aircraft order book stands at 315 planes from Boeing and 52 A350-900s from France’s Airbus.

The Dubai carrier received its first A350-900 last year and Al Redha said the company was expecting to take delivery of 17 or 18 more Airbus jets this year. 

“There is no reason today to believe that we will not receive this aircraft,” he said. “There could be an adjustment by a month or weeks due to any technicality that we might face during the delivery phase.”

Aviation is a big contributor to Dubai’s economy, accounting for 27 percent of GDP and generating AED137 billion, according to a 2023 report by research company Oxford Economics. It was estimated that the Emirates Group – the airline’s parent company – contributed around AED75 billion.

The group, which also includes aviation services specialist dnata and Emirates SkyCargo, is owned by the sovereign wealth fund the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

Linus Bauer, founder of Bauer Aviation Advisory, said Emirates’ success in the labour market would depend not on hiring volume, but on how quickly the hires become productive, safe and reliable operational capacity.

“In a tight labour market, talent execution, not ambition, decides who wins,” he said.