And so now no more do we receive the wisdom we so badly want to read
Don't be so sure, Roger.
Well, happy New Year everybody, and goodness me, haven’t the season of hostilities commenced early this year! What can it be that has the masses quivering with such giddy anticipation? Gosh, it’s probably
El Niño, or all that hot air recently spewing forth from the British junior blowhole Ian Pearson. No matter. Whatever the reason be, dear readers, might I suggest we start the year on a note of seriousness, rather than with the customary hysteria that events concerning Ryanair seems to inspire in the minds of those incontinent screeching howler monkeys that populate
Corballis Park. Time for a reality check, me thinks.
Now then, if you all listen very, very carefully, you will hear from across the Irish Sea a certain rustling in the distance. What you’re hearing is the sound of IALPA and the no-neck polyester dwarf who leads it, lathering themselves into a frenzy of lubricated glee at what they presume will be a savaging for Ryanair at the hands of the Irish courts, and more excitingly, the cash bonanza that will surely follow for their long suffering members. Apparently, they would have us believe this long and tawdry saga is finally drawing to its orgasmic conclusion on the last day of this month. We shall see.
For those of you unfamiliar with our saga, permit me to join the dots for you. In the interests of brevity, I will presume that most of you are familiar with our little airline called
Ryanair. We have 120ish Boeing 737-800’s on line at present and employ over 1500 pilots to fly them. This year, 2007, will see us with 200 aircraft online, an achievement we’re looking forward to enormously. We have around another 160 brand new aircraft on order for the time being, and will need to employ thousands more pilots to fly them in due course, thus creating opportunities for young men and women across Europe to actively pursue their dreams of a job in the airline world that otherwise wouldn’t exist, a fact conspicuously overlooked in certain unsavoury industrial quarters, but more on that later.
We make a great deal of money doing what we do because, in part, we’re led by European aviation’s answer to Alexander the Great, our CEO Michael O’Leary. The man who is succeeding where the likes of Napoleon and Hitler both failed, in uniting Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, and maybe even beyond. In short, we’re a good news story all round. Sadly though, like all flourishing organisms, we attract more than our fair share of parasites.
Enter stage left IALPA, apparently some sort of sheltered workshop for short, poorly dressed champagne socialists, and their colleagues across the water at BALPA, or as it is more commonly known to the frustration of many, the British Airways pilots fur-lined conditions maintenance and enhancement bureau. These two dinosaurs of the industrial revolution, each constantly seeking to outdo the other in displays of their own irrelevance, fell into bed one moonlit night and a short time later out popped the fruit of their loins in the form of REPA, with a face only a mother could love. And what a hairless, incompetent turd our little bastard has turned out to be in the months since its ignominious birth.
In one early disaster, REPA very nearly roasted alive a fine and decent man who was good naturedly persuaded to bulwark their first foray. To this day, in a truly breathtaking display of wobbly spin doctoring, REPA’s string pullers refer to this unfortunate episode as their “pyrrhic victory”, but I call it for what it is. An abject failure and poignant demonstration of their ceaseless malevolence, writ large. Since then REPA has launched failed attacks on almost every aspect of our operation, from maintenance to pilot selection and training. The list is long. Evan Cullen, IALPA’s vertically challenged organ-grinder-in-chief even went public in the letters page of Flight International with a poorly worded innuendo designed, apparently, to call upon the Irish Aviation Authority to investigate the seemingly endless list of faults he regurgitates and hurls in the direction of Ryanair. How embarrassing for the Dwarf that when challenged by Lilian Cassin of the IAA to put up or shut up, even privately, he chose the latter. Oh dear, Evan. Forced to swallow your own bull**** yet again! After your appearance on the tellie last year, though, I imagine you’re getting used to the flavour of dung by now.
With the exception of a few easily led grey-haired popinjays in Dublin, long term employees who seem to think that their tenure entitles them to special consideration, most of us Ryanair pilots are happy campers, but Irish pride wouldn’t permit these multi millionaire prima donnas to accept that they’d screwed the pooch in taking on our Alexander, and so they enlisted the secret, dark and midnight forces of two pointless, lunatic organisations in the rather forlorn hope of uniting the troops. Their attempts thus far have been a truly hilarious concoction of farce and falsehood that makes the Keystone cops seem like the shining lights of law enforcement virtue. They claim huge numbers of supporters, but what they don’t tell you is that these “supporters” amount to nothing more than those of us who enjoy signing up to their Aer Lingus funded website to observe the festivities from the safety of distance. Not one single Ryanair pilot has put a single Euro into REPA, and I’ll be thrilled to see just how many do when the time comes. For now, REPA shout from the rooftops about how many members they enjoy. Ho-hum. If you dress a pig in a bonnet and a pretty dress, it remains a pig underneath. Pilots are a funny bunch when asked to throw money at pointless causes.
I hope the New Year finds you well, Minuteman, and I’m sorry that your Christmas jackpot was postponed from December 21st to the end of January. May I offer an old friend some advice, though? I’d hold off on putting in that new boat order just yet if I were you. The fat lady is stirring, but with the Ryanair share price nudging €11, I wouldn’t expect a particularly long aria.