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Old 25th Oct 2016, 06:23
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KelvinD
 
Join Date: May 2011
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First 10 minutes or so; Brexit. During this, he announced that none of 2017 new aircraft deliveries will be based in UK, whereas before the referendum he had planned on basing 12 here.
He was reminded that 12 years ago, following a meeting with the European Commission, he referred to that body as the Evil Empire.
Then there is Heathrow expansion. He maintains there should be a new runway at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.
He acknowledged that Ryanair treated passengers poorly and should have addressed passenger complaints much sooner, referring to seat assignments etc.
Then came the recent issues with crew contracts, taxes etc.
He said the court case in France in which the French accused the crews of being actually based, and therefore working, in France and so should pay French taxes was rubbish. All his crews are working in Ireland and , according to him, the Irish government insists that all crews flying Irish registered aircraft are working in Ireland and therefore pay Irish taxes.
Re the tax row with Germany, he laid the blame squarely on the pilots, saying the pilots were working in Germany and so had their Irish taxes refunded and then failed to pay those taxes to the German government (which seemed to me to contradict his statement in the previous para).
The German pilots unions are, according to him, making false claims about pilots working conditions being unsafe. He said pilots work 18 hours per week and get paid up to 150,000 Euros per annum and there is a waiting list of 3,000 pilots wanting to join Ryanair and all complaints about pilots' working hours in Germany comes from Lufthansa pilots.
Finished off back with Brexit, Irish politics etc. Oh, and he is there until the end of 2018, unless the Ryanair board decide to offer him a new contract at that time. Quite dull really.
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