Jet2 4

[gorter]

Nothing to do with ALC giving them some money to do so.

And let's be honest the SBY is not some form of altruistic vision to satisfy the customers. It is a business decision to protect the business against eu261 costs. The business weighed one cost versus the other and considered sby a/c as the most cost effective way to cover this. It was either that or pay up every time an a/c was delayed more than 3 hours (which certainly happens whether this is more than other airlines I can speculate but I don't have all the facts to compare it to)

Whether the sby can be maintained when it appears (as is the rumour that I am being told by my former colleagues, yes I used to be a pilot at jet2 until a little while ago) on average one pilot is handing in his/her notice every day is yet to be seen. That outflow appears like it will continue for a while yet. There are also very good reasons for that and it's not because people are desperate to move away from their home base.

Edited to add: whilst there is nothing wrong with old aircraft per se and I had no issue with jet2 engineers, older a/c do get odd faults that are extremely hard to trace. That means several aircraft I flew in my time there sometimes had very spurious but recurring faults that would sometimes ground an a/c for a very long time only for the fault to resolve itself. Eventually after a couple of repeats could the fault be traced to some worn out part. Not unusual (certainly not extraordinary) and I would be quite certain less likely to happen on a newer aircraft. Yes old aircraft can fly around quite happily, but there comes a point when an old fleet becomes prohibitively expensive. In my opinion the time when an airline could play of boeing vs Airbus to get a dirt cheap deal is not now and whilst a fleet renewal is becoming more vital, it is also going to be significantly more expensive than it would have been in the past.