A good healthy debate then!
pjdj - I haven't spoken to or heard about Ryans activities at Gecat re. people having to pay for ratings without any gaurantee of a job. Shame if that is happening. The Netherlands guys as I outlined were on a fair enough deal in my book. Face it. BA cadets spend 5 years paying for their type rating when they join. Whats the year 1 BA CEP pay again? £24,000 and you've got to live near London...
Flypuppy - do you think Dr Evil (Mr O' Leary) has picked up the phone to PPRuNe HQ and leant on us? My points regards Ryanair are merely personal opinion - offered in the interests of BALANCE on this forum. Thats a perfectly reasonable action for a MODERATOR.
Tailscrape - the great majority of Ryanairs fleet new aircraft. The 200's are dwindling and will all be gone in 2 years. The 200 drivers I know of like the jet, have been flying them or years and will be sad to see them go. I'd like a go myself - no glass and some good old fashioned Jet scream to wake the neighbours with.
There are plenty of airlines out there whose average fleet age is older than Ryanairs and getting worse.
Mister Geezer - quite right, the big money days were a few years ago for starters at Ryan. Things, as people have outlined, have declined since then. Same as other airlines, BA are trying to/have scraped the FSS pension for new joiners, many of the charter airlines have torn up pilot agreements just as BMI is doing next month. Virgin have fired and re-hired (effectively) some pilots who have lost seniority position. Easy managed to make their crews a misery with a new roster system etc. Meanwhile the guys on the line at EGSS got their annual 3% pay rise, watched their share options inflate further, knew exactly what days and when they were flying all summer and welcomed a couple of new 737-800's and new routes to their base. Oh and never had a sleepless night worrying about their jobs or promotion prospects.
Thats a whole heck of a lot better than life for pilots in - say - BA.
And finally, Flypuppy, "In either case I dont regard this as acceptable. If facts cannot be discussed without a moderator applying company/advertiser spin to threads there really is little point in this forum existing."
I am discussing facts re fleet, pay, rostering and condition for line pilots as I know them to be in FRA out of Stansted. I am not being pointlessly emotive about Michael O Leary, I've never the met the man and he might be really nice. Who knows. You can flounce off in a huff threatening never to post here again like you have done in the past if all you can come up with is an accusation about PPRuNe mods being influenced by advertising spin or posting for personal advancement. I'm just too busy flying 900hrs a year to be spending sunny bank holiday Mondays in front of a PC trying to justify myself to your good self.
The only people who knock FRA on this board are people who have never worked there and, I suspect, do not have any friends who do.
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