What happened to the old pre-EASA 'trick' of zeroing pilots hours at the start old pre- financial year in April? Is that still allowed, or do all pilots, and rostering, keep a rolling 7 day, 28 day, 90 day + annual total? If the zeroing policy was stopped that would have an impact on increasing pilot numbers.
There is some irony here. RYR is a cash machine. They fly >90m pax. Recently they introduced a €2 'seat choice' charge. About 40m pax take up the option. K-ching. The profits rise €80m. No R&D investment; no improvement in product; no capital investment and profits rise by nearly 10%. Brilliant. And if you lower T's & C's as well, at no cost, then profits rise even more. The irony is that 5 years go, after the Volcanic ash affair, they added a €2 charge for 'EU261 compensation' bills. They claimed that affair had cost them €60-80m. Over the past 5 years there has not been a repeat, but every year €160m went into the kitty. K-ching at no extra cost. Now, by their own hand, they will have to dip into that kitty and spend out some of that EU261 insurance premium. It'll be like pulling teeth, but it will need to be done.
One wonders what will be the next €2 add on to recover profits. It is an astonishing business to be able to boost profits by 10% at no investment cost or improvement to the product, just by an inconspicuous € here & € there. Think what €1 could do to provide a proper pension fund & proper T's & C's. and stop crews having to pay for their own recurrent training and associated travel costs etc. etc. They might even then have enough pilots and not have to pay EU261 compensations. i.e. money invested wisely and productively instead of being spent painfully to achieve only negative
PR outcomes.