The family of small carriers with big diasporas: Kuwait, MEA, Gulf Air, Oman Air, Cyprus, the Maghreb three and the small airline life the giants lack
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#1 MEA, Beirut, and I promised Omar in my introduction thread that I would write the family of small carriers. Here it is: the airlines on this forum that are small fleets with big diasporas, what the small airline life actually is, and why the crew who choose it would not swap it for a giant.
The family
Middle East Airlines (Beirut, the Lebanese diaspora, the Paris spine). Kuwait Airways (Omar's quiet carrier, the Kuwaiti and the Gulf Indian diaspora). Gulf Air (Tariq's Bahrain, the smallest Gulf carrier). Oman Air (Muscat, the Omani and the Indian Ocean routes). Cyprus Airways (Nikos's Larnaca, the Cypriot diaspora in London and Athens). Royal Air Maroc, Air Algérie and Tunisair (the Maghreb three, the Paris village in the sky). Air Serbia, Croatia Airlines, the Balkan carriers (the Balkan diaspora in Germany and Austria). Ethiopian is the exception: a big carrier with a big diaspora. The rest are small.
What they share
A fleet of a few dozen aircraft or fewer. A diaspora larger than the home population in some cases, which makes the diaspora routes the spine of the network. A national identity that the crew carry (the crisis thread: the crew who flew through the hard years). A crew room where everyone knows everyone, which Mohammed and Lily described for Etihad at a different scale. A pay scale that is below the giants and a cost of living at home that is below the Gulf's. And the commute that is not a commute, because home is the base.
The small airline life
You fly with the same crews repeatedly. The cabin managers know your mother. The passengers are your community going and coming. The roster is predictable because there are few aircraft to be unpredictable with. The promotion is slow because the positions are few, and fast when a fleet grows because the list is short. The airline's crises are your crises and the airline's pride is yours. The layovers are the diaspora cities (Paris, London, Frankfurt, Dubai) and the crew have second homes there.
Why the crew choose it
Home. The family within twenty minutes. The known faces. The national thing, which the Gulf crew from these countries miss and the home crew have. The dollar or euro allowances on the diaspora routes, which make the home salary work. And a sense that the airline is theirs, which a 20,000 crew airline cannot give.
Why the crew leave it
The money, which the Gulf pays five times over. The fleet age at some. The slow promotion. The crises, which are real and recurring. And the sense, for the ambitious, that the ceiling is visible. The small carriers train the Gulf's Levant, Maghreb and Indian Ocean crews and they know it.
The honest view
The small carrier with a big diaspora is a real career and a specific one. The crew who stay are the crew for whom home is the point. The crew who leave are the crew for whom the world is the point. Both are right and the small carriers would like the forum to know that the first group exists and is proud.
For the family
Add your airline. Kuwait, Bahrain, Muscat, Larnaca, Belgrade, Zagreb, Casablanca, Algiers, Tunis. The giants have the threads. This one is ours.
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#2 Kuwait Airways, and the family has a thread and Leila has written it exactly: the fleet of a few dozen, the diaspora spine, the cabin managers who know your mother, the dollar allowances that make the home salary work. Kuwait is in. Cousin.
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#3 Gulf Air, Bahrain, the smallest Gulf carrier, and the small airline life is the one I chose at 22 and would choose at 40. The known faces and the Manama twenty minutes from the base. The giants next door pay more. We have the home.
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#4 Cyprus Airways, and the Cypriot diaspora in London and Athens being the spine of the network is exact, and the summer being everything is the island version. The small carrier family has an island member. Larnaca is in.
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#5 Tunisair, and the Maghreb three are in, with the Paris village in the sky as our contribution. The crew who stay are the crew for whom home is the point. That is my Sunday dinner in a sentence.
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#6 Croatia Airlines, Zagreb, and the Balkan carriers with the diaspora in Germany and Austria are the family's northern members: the Frankfurt and Vienna flights full of the Croatian and Serbian diaspora, the small fleet, the summer everything. Zagreb is in.
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#7 Georgian Airways, Tbilisi, and the Georgian diaspora routes to Germany and the small fleet make us a family member too, the eastern one. The cabin managers know my mother. Literally; she worked for the airline. Tbilisi is in.
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#8 Etihad, Alexandria, and I read this as the crew who left the small carrier family for the medium one. The known faces at Etihad are the echo of what Leila describes. The giants cannot give it and Etihad gives half of it. The small carriers give all of it.
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#9 @alexeitbs the cabin manager who literally knows your mother because she worked for the airline is the family's defining member. Tbilisi is in and the thread is complete. Nine airlines, one life.