Ah Rainboe, tomorrow's man in today's world. With your wonderful pension won for you by BALPA, you can now sit proud and watch the industry that gave you everything you have destroyed by the very company you now work for. Supply and demand etc, etc... You are in the fortunate position of not worrying about your next job and therefore can wax lyrical on here about whatever you want. Enjoy the moment as Astraeus's current 'success' may not last. There is a lot of water still to flow under the bridge and you may find that the bridge gets washed away in the coming flood.
However offenseive people like 'fade to grey' might find WWW's comments, there is alas some truth to his view. Your company is made up of Captains blessed by other sources of income and tragically desperate First Officers looking to get their foot on the ladder. I have no doubt that the individual referred to in WWW's post is a great guy who loves aviation, but he is probably wealthy enough to buy your whole airline and therefore is merely a hobby pilot as described by WWW. That is not to insult him personally as he is undoubtedly a highly professional and competent guy - the key fact is he does not need a cent from Astraeus and is therefure unwittingly part of the problem. There are also numerous other individuals in a similarly fortunate position of having other souces of income and that just compounds the issue. The particular tragedy is that we at easyJet were foolish enough to train up a number of your FOs and let them go - an error that has cost us dear as we crew up both Astraeus and Aer Lingus alike. Fortunately there are only so many people who can work for pocket money and eventually the chickens will come home to roost.
Regarding people's offence at Leo's posts, I can only say that I think he is one of the few quality writers on these boards. I agree with virtually nothing of what he says regarding unions, but there are some distinct elements of truth in his take on the state of Aer Lingus. It is a company with massive problems, the scale of which seems to escape many of their Dublin-based pilots. That is not really my concern, although I genuinely wish them success as a company - albeit a long way from Gatwick! Leo has a right to be heard, and when it comes to Irish airlines,there are a lot of people who would do well to hear what he is saying.
Interesting times ahead.