The difficulty of the decision to regard easyJet as an 'hours building' period in your career is that before you know it there are no career airlines as they are all as bad as each other. easyJet is now a massive airline with plans to become even bigger. They are not 2-bit companies like WizzAir or whoever who will be here today and gone tomorrow. Love them or hate them, companies like easyJet and Ryanair are here to stay. By virtue of their size and market dominance, they will define the 'rules of engagement' for the the next generation of airline pilots.
It is therefore in everyone's interests that easyJet remains profitable and combines high safety, efficiency and an entrepreneurial spirit with the best possible industrial relations. Most of us would recognise that companies such as Southwest Airlines are already a long way down that road and that we should be heading in the same direction. The fact that we are a long way off should not discourage us or dim our determination to see the situation change.
I am fully committed to staying with easyJet for the foreseeable future and to play my part in making it the jewel in the crown of the low cost carriers. That means a bit of pain now to ensure that an airline emerges where the current corporate greed and ineptitude is replaced by a team of managers and pilots working together to ensure that all employees benefit from easyJet's success and not just a few top directors. Are we currently a long way off that idea? Most definitely! Nonetheless, it can still be achieved. Had Ray Webster stayed on, I personally would have been looking for his removal as his position had become untenable with the pilots due to his shameful greed and exploitation of his own position. Fortunately a new CEO has appeared at the right time and an opportunity exists for common sense to prevail. I trust that he will take the steps necessary to ensure that the current unwise confrontation with the pilots is brought to a timely conclusion.
Pilots are like the gas turbines which run a luxury liner - as long as they are all working you can forget about them and get on with enjoying the pleasures of the voyage. When they stop working in the middle of a stormy sea, that seemingly expensive maintainance programme you decided to skip starts to appear really quite cheap! Time will tell if a foolish and unnecessary conflict is avoided, but whatever happens I am certainly one of those in for the long haul to make easyJet the career airline it should be.
Last edited by Norman Stanley Fletcher; 14th December 2005 at 20:57.