easyjet pilots to strike??
I hope this comment is taken the way it is intended. I am not from the airline, but I am acquainted with Mr Webster's past activities, and some of the comments, whilst not completely accurate, give a not entirely unjustified picture of Mr Webster's modus operandi.
This is a very simple transaction which has absolutely nothing to do with company loyalty, the "easy life-style" etc. The company needs pilots to fly the aeroplanes, ie. what many members of many management groups forget, the front-line of their business......in order to raise the revenue, to justify giving themselves a £10m bonus (regardless of how much each person will get). Pilots and engineers are the most important ingredients of a successful airline, followed very closely by cabin crew and ground staff (and this comment in no way diminishes their importance, but lets face it, you cannot operate aircraft without licenced pilots and licenced engineers).
Pilots and engineers are far more valuable than any airline seems to realise these days, particularly as they are becoming less and less fussy about people doing their own type-ratings to save them money and so on! (Incidentally, I think the engineers aren't asking for enough!)
Staff can screw up a booking, baggage handlers can send bags to the Outer Mongolia, (Hmmmm? I can feel a new route coming on!), cabin crew can be rude to the punters, management can screw up their manning requirements.......easyjet will struggle on. But crash just once.......!
May I offer this to management? Stop mucking about, pay your pilots and engineers properly, be fussier about employing people who do their own type-ratings, and stop trying to get people to pay for their own type-ratings through some silly scheme which is actually a way to get cheaper pilots! If they go on strike, you have only yourselves to blame! Get your noses out of the trough as well!
Incidentally, as a punter going into Aberdeen one evening, I was absolutely shocked to hear a really concerned foreign voice, in broken English over the 'easycom' telling me to fasten my seatbelts, followed by a similar request five minutes later followed by ....and I quote! "its going to be bloody windy". Musing on the cross-wind limits of a 737, I wondered if the pilot (the Captain I thought), was at any stage concerned about the outcome of the landing. He certainly sounded as if he was. If that was the case, why were we subjected to the most outrageously bumpy approach to 34 at Aberdeen, terminating in an amazingly soft touch-down, followed by two crew standing on the brakes to stop us before W5...... when we could all have landed safely at Edinburgh?......