Ifleeplanes - great, I am genuinely delighted to hear this. This could and should be a great profession where the natural enthusiasm of the workforce for what they are doing, if respected and nurtured, can and will create profitable, secure working environments ANDd competitive products for the travelling public.
The degree of divide-and-rule management tactics evident here on pprune, (see threads on BACX, BMI baby, Ryanair etc etc), is testament to outdated, American-sourced management concepts that have destroyed more shareholder value than they have, or ever will, create.
My concern remains the issue of both 'pay-per sim' and its effects on other carriers in reducing their own sim times to a bare minimum in an attemtp to compete, with a consequent and worrying reduction in standards across the board, and the evident highly anti-pilot/pilot union stance that certainly appears from a distance to be incompatible with a safety culture at Ryanair.
All informed replies read with great interest. The level of debate on pprune seems to drop within about three posts to a trading of barbs at best, or insults at worst, that have little relation to the issue at hand.
I emphasise that my thoughts here are NOT in ANY way an attack on LCC's. Anyone, in my opinion, who holds a professional pilot's license is worthy of great respect, both for the massive individual commitment and effort involved in acquiring it, and also for the position of stupendous public trust that they hold by exercising the privileges of that license in the performnance of their job every working day.