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Jobs in UAE: Etihad Airways set to hire 12,000 employees in 5 years
As the national carrier is set to double its fleet size, it will also double its workforce
- PUBLISHED: Thu 22 May 2025, 7:19 PM
Etihad Airways will double its workforce over the next five years as it aims to double its fleet by 2030, a senior official said on Thursday. The Abu Dhabi-based national carrier currently employs 12,000 across more than 147 nationalities.
“We will be doubling our manpower, overall, as we will get more planes. We have around 101 aircraft today, and 12,000 people, so it's going to double,” Dr Nadia Bastaki, chief people and corporate affairs officer of Etihad Airways, told Khaleej Times in an interview on Thursday.
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“In the last three years, Etihad has been doing really well. We refreshed our 2030 strategy for catchment markets, what we want to employ, and the fleet types that we want to invest in. We have actually hired more than 4,000 people in the last three years across the board – pilots, cabin crew, technicians, engineers. It Includes UAE citizens and expat workers. This year alone, we're going to receive 22 aircraft so that's what makes us going and next year will be the same. We are very excited about our journey and our growth,” Dr Bastaki said.
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On Thursday, Etihad Airways hosted its inaugural career fair, Khutwaty 2025, at Yas Island to recruit nationals in alignment with its Journey 2030 vision and beyond. Thousands of young UAE nationals turned up at the event.
The company aims to employ 2,000 people this year alone, including frontline workers such as pilots, cabin crew and engineers, Dr Bastaki said, adding that the hiring will continue at this pace over the next few years.
She elaborated that around 300 citizens, including 70 pilots, are going to be recruited by the airline every year.
30,000 job applications
Dr Nadia Bastaki added that the airline is deploying artificial intelligence (AI) technology to cope with the huge amount of job applications.
“Today, our chatbot does all the onboarding process such as onboarding, payroll transactions, birthday, anniversary recognition. We are also having a lot of new hiring technologies bringing in next month such as video interviewing with AI, scheduling with AI, and also selection with AI,” she said during the interview.
She revealed that they received about 2,000 CVs during the career fair.
“We receive a huge amount of CVs daily. When we hire cabin crew, that's the biggest population we hire, we go through more than 30,000 applications. So physically, it's not possible for anybody and I can't grow such a big team also. So I need technology to help me with my processes,” she said.
The chief people and corporate affairs officer of Etihad Airways added that technology solutions are developed internally as well as acquired from other partners as well.
