It is actually happening, and it's not just confined to PPRuNe readers.
Example - our little airline has quite a few people that would make excellent investments for any jet operator - hard working, nice blokes that have a few thousand hours turboprop, have weathered the crap job market of '02 and '03 and I know half a dozen of our captains at least are thinking about moving on.
I know for a fact that Easyjet have benefited from a few of our pilots' cv's recently, along with the usual respectable big jet operators, but it's funny that to a man when Ryanair is mentioned in the crew room there is a collective snort of disgust, along with a muttered chorus of 'pay-£50-to-submit-a-cv', 'you-must-be-joking', 'I'd-rather-work-in-Tesco' etc etc.
Myself, I know that I only drive a little steam driven, analog-instruments turboprop, and yes of course I'd love to move onto big shiny things, but hand on heart if my phone rang now and it was Ryanair on the other end offering me the chance to buy a type rating and work for them, I'd laugh in their ear and hang up.
I'm sure that Ryanair recruiting will really start to suffer as the market continues to recover. Sure there will be a never ending stream of star struck muppets with big cheque books and 200 hours who will continue to queue up and bend over, and nothing that we old hands can say could convince them to do otherwise. But if it's experienced people who have actually got a clue that they're after, I reckon that stream must have all but dried up by now.
I hate to say it but : when the inevitable 737 crash happens, and fatigued, inexperienced crews are identified as a major contributory factor, and Ryanair get the mother of all workovers from the CAA auditors and investigators, I think a few things might be forced to change over there. I'm afraid that's the only message that MOL will hear
