Chief Pilot RC visited Emirates to ask "stop t'ievin' our feckin poiluts, you feckers"
I heard a similar rumour about three or four months ago. RYR wanted to strike some kind of deal to control the number leaving to EK or mitigate the losses in some way - although its very hard to imagine what RYR have to bargain with.
And presumably its highly unlikely that EK would want to get into bed in any way with RYR and for what possible reason? - better just to carry on taking the best of their pilots - trained, tested, experienced, thanks very much - and leave RYR with the ones they don't want, like BA and others are doing.
I also heard recently, from a senior RYR trainer, that the quality of new cadets has dropped noticeably. Furthermore, i'm lead to believe that the numbers going into fATPL training with the flying schools are at long last starting to fall too - so the good ones will be in more demand and will obviously go to the better airlines, now they're hiring.
So......if the best people out of RYR's current pilots are being taken by BA, EK and others - then, not only can they not replace like-for-like in terms of experience and command upgrade potential, but the underlying quality of their current and future pilot workforce is being eroded. Other issues could result from the fact that the airline will have a constant and abnormally high proportion of flights being for training.
However, dont despair, i'm sure they know what they're doing - otherwise they wouldn't have had the nerve to treat their workforce (i cant use the word 'employees', because they aren't) with the contempt they have over the last 2 -3 years.