flydubai Cabin Crew: Requirements, Salary and the Four-Stage Application

What flydubai actually publishes as the minimum

This is the whole published list, taken from careers.flydubai.com/cabin-crew on 12 October 2026. Nothing here is inferred and nothing is borrowed from another airline, which matters more than it sounds: most of what circulates about Gulf carriers is one airline's rule copied onto another.

Two absences are as informative as the list itself. There is no arm-reach measurement — the 212 cm test that Emirates and Qatar Airways both publish simply does not appear. And the water requirement is not a swimming test: the published wording is confidence in the water wearing a flotation aid. Plenty of guides report a 50-metre unaided swim for flydubai. That is not what the airline says.

If you want the same list for every Gulf carrier side by side, that comparison lives in cabin crew requirements by airline. This page goes deeper on flydubai alone.

Why 158 cm is the most important number on the page

Height is the single most common reason a candidate decides not to apply anywhere — usually after reading a figure that belongs to a different airline. So be precise about this one.

158 cm is the lowest published minimum height of any Gulf carrier we have been able to check at source. Emirates publishes 160 cm. Etihad publishes 163 cm. Qatar Airways publishes no height at all, only a 212 cm arm reach. Several others — Air Arabia, Oman Air — publish no height either, which is why the numbers you find for them online are inventions.

Two practical consequences. First, if you are between 158 and 163 cm, flydubai is the carrier where the published rule says yes and two of the others say no. That is not a consolation prize; it is a correctly targeted application. Second, because flydubai publishes no reach requirement, the overhead-bin reach that worries shorter candidates at Emirates and Qatar is not part of the published criteria here at all.

What you should not do is assume the reverse — that being taller than 158 cm makes flydubai easier. The height line is a floor, not a ranking, and everything after it is behaviour.

The four published stages — and why they happen before you meet anyone

Here is where flydubai differs structurally from the airline most of this site's readers are aiming at, and almost no guide points it out.

Emirates runs its assessment on the day. Its published recruitment day is an introduction, then group activities and an online test at the venue, then a final interview. You turn up and everything happens in one room.

flydubai does the opposite. Its published application process has four stages, and the first three are entirely online:

1. Online application. You create a candidate profile on the career site, complete the profile fields, upload your CV and supporting documents, and answer a set of role-specific questions.
2. 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".
3. Video interview. An on-demand interview where you record your answers to a fixed list of questions. There is no live interviewer.
4. Application review. flydubai reviews your test results and your application together. Only if you clear that review are you invited to an assessment day.

Read stage four again, because it reframes the whole thing: the assessment day is the reward for passing the online stages, not the first hurdle. A candidate who prepares only for group exercises and a face-to-face interview has prepared for the last thing that happens and skipped the three filters in front of it.

There is also no published open-day calendar for cabin crew on flydubai's careers site. If you have been waiting for a flydubai open day in your city the way people wait for an Emirates one, that is the wrong thing to wait for. The application form is the door.

Stage two: the online assessment, and the practice nobody takes

flydubai names the four things the test measures. Take the list literally, because it is unusually specific:

• Work behaviour — a situational or personality-style questionnaire about how you act at work.
• Logical thinking — pattern and sequence reasoning, usually non-verbal.
• Multitasking — timed, attention-splitting tasks. This is the one candidates do not expect, and it is the most obviously job-relevant: a cabin is a multitasking environment.
• Verbal reasoning — reading a short passage and judging what does and does not follow from it. For a non-native speaker this is the stage where English level and test performance genuinely overlap.

And then the line most people skim past: flydubai states that "there are opportunities to complete practice questions before completing the real thing". The practice is offered by the airline, inside the process, free. If you do nothing else differently after reading this page, do the practice questions before the scored attempt rather than after you have already failed.

Two things worth knowing about tests like these. On the work-behaviour section, answering as the person you think they want is a losing strategy — these questionnaires are built with consistency checks and the invented version contradicts itself. On the timed sections, finishing is usually worth more than perfection, because unanswered items score nothing.

Stage three: the on-demand video interview

An on-demand video interview is not a conversation. You get a question on screen, usually a short preparation window, then it records you answering into your own laptop camera. There is no one to read, no one to nod at you, and often no second attempt.

This stage has its own guide on this site — setup, framing, lighting, what to do about the fact that you cannot see a reaction — in the cabin crew video interview guide. Three points specific to where it sits in flydubai's funnel:

• It is a filter, not an introduction. It happens before the review that decides whether you are invited anywhere. Treat it with the weight of a final interview, not a formality.
• Record one practice answer and watch it with the sound off. You are checking one thing: whether your face looks like someone who would be good to sit next to for fourteen hours.
• Answer the question that was asked, then stop. Without an interviewer to signal "that's enough", candidates keep talking and dilute a good answer. A complete answer that ends cleanly reads as composure.

Stage four and the assessment day

flydubai's published process says that candidates who clear the review "will be invited for our assessment days". The airline does not publish what happens inside one — and neither, in any real detail, does any other Gulf carrier.

What is safe to expect is the shape every assessment day shares: you are observed from the moment you arrive, there is group work, and there is an individual conversation. The full walk-through is in the cabin crew assessment day guide, and the group stage — the part that eliminates the most people and the one you cannot rehearse alone — has its own guide in the cabin crew group discussion.

One flydubai-specific note. Because the psychometric test and the video interview already happened, the assessment day is working with a file on you that includes a behavioural questionnaire and a recording. Consistency matters more here than at an airline that meets you cold. The person in the room should recognisably be the person in the video.

What AED 8,275 is — and what it does not tell you

flydubai is one of only two Gulf carriers in our checks that publishes pay at all. The published figures, exactly as stated:

The headline total people quote is the sum of the first two rows. It is a real number and it is also a number with a trapdoor in it, for two reasons.

First: the AED 4,500 is an average at 90 flying hours. A month with fewer hours pays less. The published figure describes a typical roster, not a guarantee, and flydubai says so in the same line.

Second, and more important: AED 8,275 is one number for three things. Basic pay, housing allowance and transport allowance are published combined. That means the published figure cannot tell you how much of your money is housing money — and housing is the single biggest cost of living in Dubai. Anyone who quotes you a flydubai housing allowance as a specific figure is quoting something the airline does not publish. Our full cross-airline pay comparison is in cabin crew salary by airline.

The training bond nobody else publishes

Under its own heading on the careers page, flydubai publishes: Training Bond — USD 2,650 / approx. AED 9,700 for the first year.

No other Gulf carrier we have checked publishes a bond figure. That is not evidence the others have none; it is evidence that flydubai tells you and the others do not. Treat the disclosure as a point in its favour and then do the arithmetic anyway, because candidates routinely read past it.

A training bond means the airline is carrying the cost of your initial training and recovering it if you leave inside the bonded period. The practical reading for your first year:

• It is a reason to be certain before you accept, not after. Leaving in month seven is a different financial event from leaving in month thirteen.
• It changes how you should read your first-year total. Against roughly AED 12,775 a month in published pay, AED 9,700 is a meaningful but not catastrophic figure — under a month's pay. Candidates either ignore it entirely or imagine it is career-ending. It is neither.
• Ask what triggers it and what reduces it. The published line gives a figure and a period and nothing else. The contract is where the conditions live, and the time to read that is before you sign.

Allowance or apartment: the comparison that reverses

This is the single most consequential thing to understand about flydubai pay, and it is a structural point rather than a numerical one.

flydubai pays you a housing allowance. Emirates provides shared accommodation. One is money you receive and then spend on Dubai rent; the other is a flat you are given. Add flydubai's published figures together and the headline monthly total is competitive with Emirates. Then subtract whatever Dubai rent actually costs you, and the comparison does not merely narrow — it can reverse.

We are deliberately not publishing a rent figure here, because flydubai does not publish the housing split and we will not invent the other half of the sum. What we can tell you is the right shape of the question, and it is not "which airline pays more". It is:

• Which part of this is mine to spend, and which part is already spent for me?
• If I live further out and pay less rent, what does that do to my commute at 4 a.m.?
• Do I want the autonomy of choosing where I live, or the certainty of not having to?

Some people should take the allowance: it buys you independence, a choice of neighbourhood and the option to live alone. Some people should take the apartment: it removes the largest variable cost and the hardest logistics problem from your first year abroad. There is no universally correct answer, and any article that gives you one by comparing the two headline numbers has skipped the only step that mattered. The ranked, number-by-number comparison across carriers is in best airlines to work for as cabin crew.

flydubai or Emirates — which do you apply to first?

The honest answer is that this is usually a false choice, and the reason is in the processes rather than the packages.

The two recruitment funnels cost you completely different things. Emirates' open days are walk-in events: no registration, but you must be physically in the right city on the right day. flydubai's route is an online application you can start tonight from anywhere, with the next two stages also online. The resources they consume — travel and timing versus a few focused evenings — barely overlap.

So the sequencing question that actually helps:

• If you are between 158 and 160 cm, flydubai's published rule includes you and Emirates' does not. Start where the published criteria say yes.
• If an Emirates open day is announced near you, go. It costs a day and there is no application to lose.
• If you are nowhere near an open day, the online funnel is the one you can act on immediately, and the psychometric practice is useful preparation whoever you end up flying for.
• If you want structured accommodation in your first year abroad, weigh that heavily and read the housing section above again.

How the stages themselves differ carrier by carrier — what each airline tests and in what order — is mapped in cabin crew interview by airline.

The recruitment fraud warning flydubai publishes itself

flydubai puts this on its careers site, unprompted, and it deserves to be repeated in full because candidates from outside the UAE are the people it protects. The airline states that fake offers of employment are circulating by email, letter, SMS and WhatsApp, that they "often look legitimate and may include job descriptions, salary, and benefit details", and that they direct recipients to provide bank account details.

Four checkable rules follow from what flydubai publishes:

1. flydubai does not request bank account details by email, letter or message in order to process documents.
2. flydubai will never refer you to a third party to process applications or visas. Any "agent" or "academy" that offers to handle your flydubai application for a fee is, by the airline's own statement, not part of the process.
3. Official communication comes only from an address ending @flydubai.com. Anything else is not flydubai, however the signature looks.
4. Jobs are advertised on flydubai's own websites. A vacancy that exists only in a message you received is not a vacancy.

flydubai also publishes what to do: forward anything suspicious to recruitment@flydubai.com with the subject line "Recruitment Fraud", and the airline will confirm whether the message is genuine. If you have already been contacted by someone promising a flydubai job for a payment, that email address is the fastest way to find out what you are dealing with.

Next steps

flydubai is the Gulf carrier that tells you the most and asks you to do the most before anyone looks at you. That combination rewards preparation in a very specific order.

1. Check yourself against the published list above — the real one, not an aggregated one. 21, 158 cm, high school diploma, one year of customer service, valid passport.
2. Get the CV and documents ready first, because stage one will not let you progress without them. The format that works is in the cabin crew CV guide.
3. Do the practice questions flydubai offers before the scored assessment. This is the cheapest advantage available in the entire process and most candidates skip it.
4. Record one video answer this week and watch it back without sound. Then read the video interview guide and record it again.
5. Only then prepare for the assessment day — the full walk-through and the group stage.

If you want someone to go through your profile against what flydubai actually publishes, and to work on the two stages you cannot rehearse alone, book a 90-minute 1:1 session with Kateryna. She flew for Emirates, you get a questionnaire and preparation materials in advance, and the live time goes on your video answers and the group stage rather than on repeating what you have just read.