Joke going around that passengers will be charged for an apology, £10 will entitle the customer a terse and mendacious apology.

However, customers can upgrade to a ‘premium remorse’ package which will entitle them to more convincing expressions of regret.

“For a one-off payment of £50 our representative will try to squeeze out a tear whilst informing you that there’s no way you’ll be getting to your destination in the foreseeable future,” a spokesman told us.

Appears MOLs claim Norwegian are burning through cash is not far off the mark.

Since this is a Ryanair thread, I'll explain the Ryanair factor in this decision, the Ryanair factor is not the only reason they are building it, but certainly it is a factor that contributes to it.

Basically there is a long running battle between PPL (Polish State Airports) and Ryanair which has been going on for the best part of a decade to be honest on and off, I would say Ryanair have worse relations with PPL than any other airport operator, they've complained to the EU about them numerous times.

Basically what it stems from is many years ago when Ryanair flew from Chopin Airport, PPL closed the low cost area at Chopin Airport when LCCs started to rapidly expand and told Ryanair could stay if it went to the core part of the airport with much higher charges. many people speculated that this was an attempt to try and protect LOT.

Ryanair then was heavily lobbying for Modlin Airport for some years, quite a few before any building work started on it. The problem was that Modlin wasn't going to be built because there was not adequate funding for it and PPL would not supply it. Many people felt that PPL could fund it but simply refused to, again to protect LOT.

In the end without enough funding from PPL the Millitary agencies along with local authorites made submissions to the EU for grants to fund the operation of the airport which were accepted, at which point PPL became involved in the project again, the airport was built and Ryanair returned to Poland.

Then there was the situation with Wizz at Modlin who moved out of the airport back to Chopin for an undefined period because of the lack of ILS and then when the airport was closed due to the runway being defective Wizz tried to claim compensation from Modlin for the runway being out of action, despite the fact they'd already moved all their flights out of the airport at the time, they didn't get the compensation they were looking for and never came back.

Over the last 2-3 years PPL have made many attempts to try and gain sole shareholding of Modlin Airport and buying out the other shareholders and using their existing shareholding to get their own people appointed to the board and as chairman & CEO to influence the running of the airport and to run a so called duopoly airport strategy.

Most people I speak to are very cynical at this and believe that the only reason that PPL want to control Modlin is so they can control the growth of Ryanair and therefore protect Chopin Airport and LOT who have lost out because of the presence of Ryanair, there has been talk of having similar charging regimes at both airports and obviously that would hit Ryanair and benefit traditional carriers.

Modlin is now at capacity and again PPL are dragging their heals in relation to investing in the expansion of the airport however there has been indication that if they get full ownership they may be more likely to invest but there are questions about their motives for acquiring the full stake in the airport for the reasons that are outlined above, Modlin being at capacity suited PPL fine since if Modlin cannot expand neither can Ryanair.

To force the issue Ryanair moved it's domestic flights to Chopin Airport and said that if they cannot expand at Modlin they will just do so at Chopin starting with moving the most business orientated routes from Modlin (basically targeting LOT) to Chopin to allow more leisure routes out of Modlin. Chopin couldn't refuse this but on the day Ryanair announced it PPL made the extraordinary statement that they didn't want Ryanair at Chopin but they had to take them.

Since then there has been tit for tat stuff going on, for example in Chopin Airport now Ryanair are getting allocated the furthest away gates from the terminal on a regular basis when arriving into Warsaw that rarely see any use outside Ryanair flights even when nearer parking spaces are avaliable, having long waits for buses and other services that take long routes from the terminal to the airplane and vice versa. Ryanair is now pulling out of Chopin because of this and making a complaint to the EU about unfair treatment.

The idea of one central airport is essentially that in the long term when completed it can possibly replace both Modlin and Chopin Airport and will almost certainly owned by PPL - essentially this would give them complete control over aviation in Warsaw once more, without worrying about low cost carriers at a competing airport. It'll obviously help LOT too and it will bring other benefits than just related to LCCs and LOT so it'd be totally wrong to say they're just doing it for those reasons, but many people think that it plays a part.

The points made about lack of subcharters are particularly notable at Stansted, apparently the point of greatest cancellations, where one of the major subcharter/ACMI operators in Europe, Titan, is based right on the field, and their fleet standing awaiting a call must be visible to all in the Ryanair office there.

It costs money to charter aircraft from Titan or any other airline for that matter. Enough said.

A huge number of Bulgarians have left the country. I work with a guy from the Bourgas area. Sure some of these routes are for the bucket and space crowd, but others such as Hahn might have legs over winter to serve the diaspora.

What is interesting is the UK isn't included in this expansion.

Wizz Air already operated Burgas-Luton so I guess that was excluded from the local authority incentive and airport charges discounts.


I can see Hahn, Weeze, Bergamo and Memmingen being year around but that still leaves a very underused aircraft in winter. Maybe some W flying?

Ryanair have advertised 250,000 passengers a year for Burgas.


We know they are planning 19 weekly flights during the summer schedule (though perhaps not all flights will operate for the full season) adding up to about 180,000 passengers between April and October.


This leaves 80,000 passengers for the winter schedule or about 7 to 8 weekly departures. Of course, a lot can change between now and when the winter schedule is announced.

Not going well....

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0920/90...yanair-pilots/

Prefer this?

Ryanair looking to Brazil for more airline pilots - Independent.ie

Listening to MOL's shpeel on Irish news he, almost, seemed to be blaming rostering for the mess; yet he controls and is responsible for that department. It is internal.

There is so much attempt at 'spin' on this matter that the Blarney Stone must be worn out.

It is becoming a bit of a parody where Independent is quoting what was said on here and then people posting the story and saying "oh look what they are saying so it must be fact after all"

A very good 10 minutes regarding the current situation at Ryanair was shown on Newsnight on BBC2 on Wednesday night if anyone is interested in viewing on BBC catch-up.

That could be so if it wasn't for that Ryanair still have the August Rio and São Paulo roadshows for Captains advertised on their careers site.

Well the corporate grave is littered with the remains of companies where their demise started with one small bad decision and that then snowballed. Economics will now take over and if Ryanair are unable to recruit enough pilots on the current contract, then they will have no choice but to improve that contract. If they refuse to accept that they need to improve work practices, the staffing issue will continue and get worse as I suspect pilots/cabin crew have plenty of alternatives at this moment of time. Ryanair bosses need to be thinking very hard about where they go from here, every direction has different implications. Corporate greed has caught up with them big time. I am as much a capitalist as the next person, but the workers also need to share in success better than has been happening over the past 10 years. Ryanair is maybe the first large example of where employees have suddenly got the upper hand. Dangerous time for the long-term future of Ryanair, Michael and his mates better be thinking very clearly.

From sky news
 

Ryanair's Chief Executive Michael O'Leary says the airline will recruit 125 pilots over the next two weeks and increase pilots' pay.

But then goes on to say.
Ryanair's Chief Executive Michael O'Leary says he cannot guarantee an end to current flight cancellations and disruption.


Has he got a magic hat to pull all of these pilots from ?

FR must have a magic money tree.

He should ask Theresa May about hers :)

Doesn't matter how many pilots he recruits during the next 2 weeks. They won't be online for at least 4 - 6 months

Agreed, and on top of that they have a screwed reputation with passengers, the baggage rule timing now looks awful.

They're on really dangerous territory reputationally now too. Imagine if they had a plane land at the wrong airport again; people would assume it was a tired pilot...

Perhaps a major re-branding is called for. A new name. May I suggest NEROAIR. The airline that fiddles as the Treaty of Rome burns.