Greetings all.
I would like to make some points to all participating actively, and passively. We at Ryanair are at no illusion where we are. We have not just woken up to the success of the airline and desire more money, or more benefits. We all know we work for Ryanair, and not South West or BA, or Virgin, or any other airline in the world. Each has its unique issues and pros and cons.
We all were happy to join Ryanair, and work hard for a living ( 4sectors in and out of London, daily, training cadets is very tiring when you have to give a quality product to the customers, do a 25 minute turnaround, and train to the highest standard the new guys.) What we achieve at work goes above and beyond what MOL and his team gives us tools and policy for. I am not going to argue about underpayment, or not being valued enough, etc.
We pilots at Ryanair are fighting to keep our present terms and conditions from erroding. Everything around the world is becoming more expensive, and our salaries are going the wrong way.
I do not want to leave Ryanair because management are unable to find long term solutions to their cost model, and are destroying our tcs because that is all they can do. When the times were tough many years ago, we all agreed to a paycut when management told us we might have to see some of our colleagues go, but that was when we were fighting for survival.
Ryanair makes millions of Euros in cash every year, 250 millions last year, and about the same this year, and this is after tax. We have over 1 billion in cash which is airline wealth and not cash in hand for day to day operations. No one in Management has given anything back from their high salaries, or their high bonuses to say, look guys we are participating in a difficult period of cutbacks, and here is what we are also giving back. Ryanair does not need to cut back costs further to compete, they are already extremely low. They need to become more service oriented. In the mean time they are squeezing everyone out of the market, with artificial cost reductions, taking away things from its employees which are not priviledges, or benefits but the mere necesities. Having water onboard an aircraft is not an unnecessary cost, it is a legal requirement. Taking away our loss of licence, is not a benefit, it is a necessity. Our job has a six month validation period, and some of us have needed this money to help us fund something to do in between jobs when we have lost our licence thus our income generating capability.
We do not want to leave the airline just because the bosses cannot make their ambitious plans work. They are the ones buying 300 airplanes like as if they were coffee table. If their plans had worked, they would be billioners, but we would still be getting the same salaries. It was their choice to be where they are, so if they cannot make things work, and fill up airplanes with high yield pax, then they should reap the consequences of their missmanagement and close the door on the way out.