Hello there. I have been employed with Emirates Airlines as a First Officer B777-200 and -300 for just over 3 years and have just been upgraded to B777 Captain. Prior to that I worked in Canada for Canada 3000 Airlines (B757 F/O), Royal Airlines (B727 F/O and S/O) and prior to that 6 months as a Cessna 441 Medivac F/O and started out my career flying a Piper Navajo on the west coast.
Flying the 777 for Emirates is exciting and challenging. The training here is excellent, the company is progressive and professional, and with the growth projections of the co., most newhires can expect a Command Upgrade within about 3 - 4 years (despite Sept 11th!). The 777 flies to a wide variety of destinations including 4 airports in the UK, Paris, Singapore, Bangkok, Manilla, Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Cairo, Sydney, Perth, Melbourne to name a few.
Emirates recruits pilots from all over the world and Canada is no exception. Interestingly there are 52 different nationalities among the 900 or so pilots within the company. The top three nationalities by numbers are British, Australian, then Canadian.
On average, a pilot on the B777 can expect to work about 13 - 15 days per month. The flying can be anything from a same-day 'there and back', to a six day Dubai - Singapore - Australia - Singapore - Dubai pairing where you get a fair bit of time to explore Singapore.
Despite being located in the middle east, Dubai is very relaxed and very liberal. My wife and I enjoy all of the freedoms we had in Canada plus year round sunshine. I play all of the sports I did in Canada including Ice Hockey - there is a decent rink and a pretty good league here with lots of Canadians playing. Golf over the winter months here is great as well.