For those who keep saying "that's what you get", "you should know better etc" what would they honestly do in the position of us FO's who just managed to get in the Ryanair door before they stopped recruiting? Would you sit it out with £100k of debts? Try to find another job? Believe me I thought long and hard, and waited just about as long as I could trying everything else before I went to RYR. Sometimes it might be easy for those sitting on the fence to criticise us while they are already in a good job with a decent airline. Not to mention I know 1 person who paid for TR for an African company that never materilised, and several who paid for TR & line training in Asia, with no job at the end of it!
As regards BALPA, I would personally gladly give up a few % of my salary (If I got one!) to not see any of my colleagues loose their jobs as was the case with Thompson, but I worry in Ryanair that there are alot of people who just dont think like that. And that's the worrying bit, lots of other FO's I know are only in it for themselves, lots of floating foreign captains bragging about their take home pay and tax free, not to mention how many I know waiting to join the (paid for) assessment queue for the next Brookfield contract for newbies with even less pay and worse conditions than I signed up to. So long as these people exist I really worry the campaign might struggle. Which is a shame, as most of the people I fly with every day are decent chaps, nice enough roster, nice aircraft - it could really be a good place to work.
So while its easy to sit and tell us all in Ryanair that we should have known better, maybe those of us who have some balls to get something done could just get on with trying to make it a better place? Even if you dont really like BALPA or the idea of a union, consider it a necessary evil - especially us FOs - who knows what it'll be like by the time we get towards command! Buy your command training for the highest bidder? Worse pay, less hours? Let's stop it before it gets any worse!