John Smith, thank you for your timely injection of common sense.
I've read this thread and there's a lot of talk about NAS saving the industry or words to that effect. Wake up guys!! Whether you like it or not, it's about making money and that depends solely on your costs versus how much you can sell tickets for.
The difference in uniform cost will be a €400 or so, but when you wear one and walk past some other airlines crews you know you belong some where that values quality
This may give you a warm fuzzy feeling but if they're spending 400 Euros per pilot on giving them that warm fuzzy feeling then I would have to ask myself where else are they p1$$ing money up the wall.
the problem for EZY is that RYR are aiming to squeeze the bottom end of the EZY customer base and Norwegian are squeezing the top end with a superior product at a comparable price.........interesting times ahead
EZY and Ryanair are operating in quite different marketplaces with little overlap. EZY compete with the legacy carriers at the prime airports whereas Ryanair keep their costs down by using secondary airports. It's a different business model. The question is where do NAS fit into this? If NAS can offer a superior service for exactly the same price then they will do well. But if their costs are higher then they won't actually make any money. If it doesn't make any money then the shareholders will pull the plug. I may be the not-so-proud owner of a cheap plastic coat, but that gives me the warm fuzzy feeling that my employer is not paying over the odds for anything else either. If you check the easyjet share price then you will see that the 'plastic coat' approach to costs seems to be working well.
Norwegian has gone down the road of offering high class refreshments delivered promptly to the passengers and that is what the passengers seem to like, rather than what they see as the bullying tactics of RYR ( and to a lesser extent EZY) that just makes them shut their wallets.
I'm not sure what kind of high pressure sales techniques you think are going on down the back in other airlines but it mostly consists of 'any drinks or snacks for you sir/madam?'. Anything which causes people to shut their wallets really doesn't go down well.
I wish NAS the best of luck because I think they're going I need it. To me, something doesn't add up.