The longest-serving flight attendant at Dubai-based airline Emirates is celebrating 36 years at the airline, having racked up 3,500 flights that he has worked on during his long career.
Moosa Mubarak, an Emirati national who joined Emirates in its infancy in 1987, has now been a purser at the carrier for many years, and despite his long career, Moosa says he still looks forward to every flight.
“Even now, after all these years, I’m always keen and excited to start my duty onboard,” Moosa said on Wednesday. “Mentoring my crew colleagues and serving as an ambassador for Emirates and my country is what I am most proud of.”
“I have had a long and successful career, incredible experiences and have made mind-blowing memories doing exactly what I love,” Moosa continued.
Emirates is keen to point out that cabin crew have the opportunity to build long careers at the airline, in contrast to the image that Emirates only recruits and retains young flight attendants in their twenties and thirties.
The longest-serving female cabin crew member has worked for Emirates since 1994, and thousands of crew members have worked for the airline for at least five years, the airline said on Wednesday.
Just three serving crew members, all male, have worked for Emirates for more than 30 years, 400 crew members have worked for the airline for at least 20 years, 1,500 crew members have been at Emirates between 15-19 years, 3,000 have served between 10-14 years and 4,000 have worked at the airline for between 5-9 years.
What’s remarkable about this, though, is the fact that, unlike Moosa, Emirates recruits the vast majority of its cabin crew from other countries, meaning that these long-serving employees have moved to Dubai from another country and managed to build a new life in the UAE.
In fact, Emirates now boasts a cabin crew workforce representing 140 nationalities who collectively speak 130 different languages. Following one of the biggest recruitment campaigns in the airline’s history, the Emirates cabin crew workforce has now surpassed 20,000, and the airline continues to scour the world for more new crew.
