flydubai's cabin crew page lists sixteen requirements, a pay figure, an average for flying pay, four named selection stages and a training bond. It is the only Gulf carrier in this series to publish a bond.

Its Apply now button does not open an application. It opens flydubai's job search, filtered to cabin crew, and when no cabin crew vacancy is advertised, that search returns nothing.

That is not a fault on the page. The cabin crew page stays up whether or not a vacancy is open, and only the job search tells you which it is. Knowing that is the difference between a wasted afternoon and a sensible plan.

What flydubai asks for

Sixteen items, published as one list headed Minimum Requirements. The physical and formal ones:

  • At least 21 years old
  • Minimum height of 158 cm, "in accordance with our safety regulations"
  • "High school diploma is essential"
  • One year of experience in a customer service role, "ideally in aviation, hospitality, or retail"
  • Fluent written and spoken English, with additional languages an advantage
  • A valid passport
  • In good health, "with the ability to pass an aero medical examination"
  • "Confident in the water when wearing a flotation aid/life jacket"
  • Willing to relocate to Dubai
  • No visible tattoos while in uniform
  • A well-groomed and professional appearance, in line with flydubai's grooming standards

Five more sit in the same list: willingness to work irregular hours, including weekends, holidays and overnight shifts; enthusiasm and a proactive approach; respect and adaptability in a multicultural team; a safety-conscious attitude and the ability to respond to emergencies calmly and effectively; and international aviation experience, which flydubai calls an advantage while listing it among the minimum requirements.

Three of the sixteen stand out beside the other Gulf carriers.

158cm is the lowest published height of the five carriers in this series. Emirates and Riyadh Air set 160cm, Etihad 163cm, and Qatar Airways publishes no standing height at all. flydubai publishes a height and no reach measurement, the reverse of Qatar Airways, which publishes only a 212cm reach. Emirates and Riyadh Air publish both.

The water requirement is worded precisely. flydubai's page does not ask you to swim. It asks that you be "confident in the water when wearing a flotation aid/life jacket", a lower bar than Riyadh Air's, the only other carrier in this series to publish a water requirement, which asks for "a confident swimmer".

One year of customer service experience is a requirement here, and a preference at Qatar Airways. Qatar Airways splits its criteria into "Essential qualifications" and a second list headed "What will help you succeed", and its experience line sits in the second: "Preferably 2+ years of experience in hospitality, customer service, aviation, or another customer-facing role." So Qatar Airways asks for more experience than flydubai, and asks for it less bindingly.

What it pays, and what it asks of you

Basic salary, housing allowance and transport allowance together come to AED 8,275. The cabin crew page gives no period for that figure. flydubai's captain and first officer pages put the word "monthly" before theirs, so monthly is the evident reading here too. On top of it sits variable flying pay, which flydubai gives as a monthly average of AED 4,500, based on an average of 90 flying hours.

The package pays a housing allowance rather than providing housing. Emirates and Qatar Airways both provide the accommodation itself, and Etihad lists "A home in Abu Dhabi" among its benefits. Riyadh Air publishes nothing on housing. flydubai is the only one of the five to publish an allowance in its place, and its careers site says nothing about where cabin crew live. For anyone moving to Dubai for the first time, that is a materially different proposition.

Alongside the pay sit medical insurance, an end of service benefit, 30 days of paid leave a year and an annual leave ticket. Two things that appear in the Other Rewards lists on flydubai's engineering and pilot pages are missing from the cabin crew one: concessional tickets for family and friends, and an open ended contract.

Directly above the pay, under its own heading, sits the training bond: USD 2,650, approximately AED 9,700, for the first year.

What the cabin crew page does not explain is what triggers the bond, how it is repaid, or what happens if you leave inside the year. flydubai does explain the mechanism for one group of pilots, on its Second Officer page: "Bond amount shall reduce by way of salary deduction each month over the active duty until it is repaid in full upon transition to a First Officer." Whether cabin crew bonds work the same way is not stated anywhere on flydubai's careers site, and it is the first question to ask.

The bond is house practice rather than a quirk of this role. flydubai's captain and first officer pages publish three-year bonds of USD 24,000 for pilots already type rated on the Boeing 737 and USD 36,000 for those who are not, and its Second Officer page a bond of USD 36,000 over 24 months. Some pilot candidates also pay to be assessed: USD 1,000 on the Second Officer programme, and AED 1,000 plus VAT on the ab initio programme, which flydubai describes as self-sponsored for non-UAE nationals. The cabin crew page lists no assessment fee.

Applying

flydubai publishes its selection process as four named stages, up to an invitation to an assessment day.

Online application. You create a candidate profile, upload a CV and other documents, and answer a series of questions described as part of the role requirement.

Online assessment test. flydubai sends a link to "a series of online psychometric tests in relation to work behaviour, logical thinking, multitasking and verbal reasoning". It says practice questions are available beforehand, which is worth taking up.

Video interview. An on-demand interview in which you record answers to a set list of questions. Nobody is on the other end at the time.

Application review. flydubai reviews the test results and the application together, and candidates who meet its criteria are "invited for our assessment days".

That is where the published account stops. flydubai names the cabin crew assessment days and says nothing about what happens at them: no format, no stages, no duration, and no indication whether it is a group day or an interview. Emirates publishes a three-part recruitment day, with a document checklist and a dress code, and Etihad describes its assessment day too.

flydubai does describe assessment days elsewhere on the same site. Its captain, first officer and second officer pages each set out two days, one in the simulator and one of psychometric assessment, a competency-based interview and a check of flying documents, and its ab initio page lists a group activity, a personality assessment and a one-to-one interview. For cabin crew it names the day and stops there.

Where to apply, and what to know first

The Apply now button on the cabin crew page leads to flydubai's job search, filtered to the cabin crew category. When no cabin crew vacancy is advertised, that search returns zero results, and what a candidate is offered instead is a prompt to register for future jobs matching the search, or to join flydubai's talent community.

So you apply when flydubai advertises a cabin crew vacancy, and in between you can register to be told when it does. The cabin crew page stays up either way, with its requirements and its pay, which is why it is easy to read as an open invitation when no vacancy is open.

flydubai's careers site also carries an Events item in its top navigation, which suggests a recruitment calendar of the kind Emirates publishes. It does not lead to one. The link resolves back to the careers home page.

What happens after an offer

For cabin crew, almost nothing is published, and the gap is sharper than it first appears because of what flydubai publishes for other roles.

There is no probation period, no contract length or type, no training length or location, no roster pattern, no days off figure and no grade structure for cabin crew. The cabin crew page carries a Career Growth heading, but what sits under it is a single sentence about opportunities for individual growth and self-development, with no structure attached.

Its pilot pages publish much of that. The ab initio programme's pages break training into phases with months against each, say where each phase takes place, give a promotion timeline from Second Officer to First Officer of usually 24 to 30 months, and state an accommodation policy: housing in the UAE is the cadet's own responsibility. The Second Officer page publishes the bond repayment mechanism quoted above. The engineering page and the captain, first officer and second officer pages all list an open ended contract, and the three pilot pages give 36 or 42 days of paid leave a year, against 30 for cabin crew.

flydubai does publish terms, for its pilots. It does not publish them for its cabin crew.

Beyond the role pages, flydubai's careers site has an About flydubai section covering its history, fleet, workforce, network and culture, and a Discover Dubai section covering the city's history, culture, lifestyle, schooling and healthcare. Neither carries anything on accommodation, joining formalities or terms of employment.

What a cabin crew candidate does know is the shape of the package: AED 8,275 in salary and allowances, average flying pay of AED 4,500, medical insurance, an end of service benefit, 30 days of leave, an annual leave ticket, and a training bond of USD 2,650 for the first year.

Set that against Emirates, which publishes six months of probation, that leave becomes available once probation ends, approximately eight days off a month, seven training stages with their durations, and the rules of its crew accommodation down to visiting hours. Emirates requires crew to live in that accommodation unless they are married and their spouse lives in the UAE, have immediate family already living there, or choose to buy property.

flydubai tells you what the job pays. It tells you far less than Emirates about what living it is like.

The fraud warning

flydubai carries a recruitment fraud warning on its careers home page, and it is worth reading whoever you apply to. It describes emails, letters, SMS and WhatsApp messages claiming to be offers of employment, which "often look legitimate and may include job descriptions, salary, and benefit details" before directing recipients to provide bank account details.

Three lines in it are worth memorising. flydubai does not send messages "requesting your bank account details in order to process documents". It "will also never refer you to a third party to process applications or visas". And its official communications come only from an email address ending in @flydubai.com. A message you are unsure of can be sent to recruitment@flydubai.com with the subject line "Recruitment Fraud".

Our guide to fake airline job offers sets flydubai's warning beside those of seventeen other airlines.

A note on sourcing

The requirements, the pay, the training bond, the other rewards, the career growth line and the four application stages come from flydubai's cabin crew careers page. The application stages were read from the rendered page, because they do not reliably appear in extracted text. Where the Apply now button leads, and what it offers when nothing is open, come from flydubai's job search filtered to cabin crew, and the fraud warning and the Events link from its careers home page. The pilot bonds, pay periods, assessment fees and assessment days, the training phases, the promotion timeline and the accommodation policy come from flydubai's captain, first officer, second officer and ab initio pages and the ab initio FAQ, and the engineering rewards from its engineering page. The About flydubai and Discover Dubai sections were read for terms of employment and carry none. All were read on 28 September 2026.

The comparisons come from each airline's own pages, also read on 28 September 2026: the Emirates Group Careers cabin crew page, including its recruitment day, training, accommodation and onboarding sections, Etihad's cabin crew careers page, Qatar Airways' cabin crew recruitment page, and a Riyadh Air cabin crew recruitment event listing.

Statements about what flydubai does not publish for cabin crew cover its whole careers navigation. Whether a cabin crew vacancy is open changes, and the job search is the only reliable answer on any given day. Nothing here comes from candidate accounts, coaching sites or recruitment agencies.