Ryanair exodus, what is the plan?

[fastidious bob]

Exodus, not so sure. They will be many leaving this year but not enough to bring the operation to a grinding halt.

My prediction for the next 5 years are as follows.

1) The biggest issue is the Irish government. Within 12 months I predict the government will be chasing Ryanair for N.I contributions and make the vast majority of Pilots employees.
2) The European Commission will finally allow Ryanair to increase its share in Aer Lingus from 29% to the majority shareholder.
3) Once The take over of Aer Lingus is completed and expansion stops, Mr oleary and the bulk of his management team will exit the airline (Ever business/man has an exit strategy).
4) The airline will have some form of union recognition.

Ryanair will be where easyjet is now in five years. The majority of Pilots will be employed with a form of union recognition. Ryanair's business model is slowly evolving. The company in the near future will be relying a lot less on airport subsidies due to the lack of grants being awarded to airports from local government, and relying a lot more on profits from ticket sales. In order to charge a premium more flights will be scheduled into larger airports.

If you can put up with the politics and the aggressive management style now, you my reap the rewards later.

FB

[smith]

FR1A

The reality is that Airlines are no longer supported by the Tax Payer and have to make a profit for their share holders. You need to look at the big picture and not follow the heard in attacking FR pilots.

How many times have FR taken local government grants (paid for by the tax-payers of various countries across Europe) to move into an Airport??

Just accept what MOLG says, FR is an airline of ridicule with jokes, funny emails, spoof youtube videos and even a song made up about them. Can you name another airline that gets this ridicule in this day, both from crew and passengers. The've even had multiple tv documentaries made about them with regard to their employment practices.

Yes I know you are all going to tell me that MOL thrives on the "all publicity is good publicity", but the amount of -ve publicity for an airline so young is astonishing, yet most FR pilots are oblivious to the mess that has been created, similar to Berlin in the 1940's, they knew what they were doing was wrong but went along with it anyway.

To MOL bad publicity is good publicity, but to your working class Joe (the market loco's have opened flying up to) tales of stewardesses flying planes, b*** jobs in first class, standing on the plane and paying to take a leak just won't wash with passengers in the long run.

Those of you who say you don't agree with this are talking brown.

Yes make your exodus plan. But remember you were the ones that helped create the mess you so despise.

[irishpilot1990]

@whistle blower... i tend to think of my real wage as x-5 euro..and pretend that deduction does not happen

fastidious bob.... hope you are right but by god is that a very positive view of things( while very much a possibilty at the same time). Aviation business changes over night.

[VJW]

SMITH comparing FR pilots to Berlin in 1940 is talking brown!

[PPHOS058]

Hi there everybody

2 points to make.

Firstly will you all stop having a go at guys who have paid for their type rating with FR. Yes I did it. There was no option! I have been flying professionally for years, I served my time etc and had a nice job lined up and bang the credit crunch, bye bye job. The only place hiring was FR. And after doing all sorts of work flying and non flying to scratch out a living for a year working for FR is a lot better than all of them despite the crap T's&C's. Flying schools and small local companies pay less than the minimum wage for god sake. What would you want me to have done, stay working on a building site because I wouldn't lower myself to work for FR!

Secondly and more to the point of the thread, I have heard lots of guys going to the sand box, lots of people disappearing for interviews and waiting to hear back. How much effect this will have on FR management is anybodies guess but I would not count on the steady stream of young guys fresh out of flying school to replace them. Yes there is a back log of guys at the moment but banks are not lending. Unless your folks are loaded then where do you get £60k ish for your licence and another £25k for a type rating. Not a bank that is for sure.

[jimsmitty01]

Tax

'1) The biggest issue is the Irish government. Within 12 months I predict the government will be chasing Ryanair for N.I contributions and make the vast majority of Pilots employees.'

- I think the Irish government is happy and approved the current situation, as all new employees at FR (contractors) pay their income tax in IRL. I think that if we were to become employees, our tax status would change.

- Spoke to a few Capts, and they would much prefer paying their tax in their home country due to the high rate they are on now in IRL.

- Obviously because the TR is offsetting tax for new guys its not so bad for the first few years.

Contracts for FO's are 5 years. So I don't see things changing any time soon.

But we'll see!

[MichaelOLearyGenius]

Pphoso52

I don't think your pathetic pleas to stop dissing FR and it's pilots is going to cut the mustard.

There are always going to be people like Me FR bashing on this site.

Deal with it buddy, your stupid post ain't gonna make one iota of a difference!!!

Did you really think what you wrote would change anyone's mind about FR?

Grow up!!!!!

[go around flaps15]

Grow up?

Rich.

[warpspeedmrsulu]

MOLG, you can bash FR on this site all you like, or its pilots.
You're too thick to see the bigger picture here.

I don't travel with FR because the product is not what i want as a passenger. I do fly for them, yes, but i'll probably leave at some stage. Maybe to go back to my old profession, maybe not. As for you MOLG, i worry for you. It seems you want someone else to solve your problems and believe the world owes you a living.

Do you want to know why, honestly, i've come into professional flying? Its because it paid more than my previous profession. Yes, it really is that simple - that, and the fact that i've loved flying since i was in short trousers. Would you have been prepared to compensate me to stay where i was? No, i somehow thought not.

However, now i'm doing the job, who can blame me for looking around to see if i can do better elsewhere? As for low cost trips to the costa - let the market decide whether it lives or dies, i genuinely don't care - i trust the public and the oil cartels to decide. Your pretense that theres some kind of global union of piloting right and wrong is pathetic.

The strange thing is in all this, that many of the people who love flying the most and have had to fight the hardest to do this job are the children of a lesser god in lo co land... Funny old world.
But as always, you do have to laugh

[MichaelOLearyGenius]

Ok, I think we can agree to disagree.

FR SSTR pilot's think that their chosen career path is good for them personally.

The FR bashers think that it is bad for aviation as a whole.

I guess we should just leave it at that. We probably will never reach common ground.

[matrix777]

What a great thread.

It's amazing to see how SSTR pilots always try to justify their pay to fly decision.

Anyone who fly's for Ryanair should have their medical revoked because they clearly need psychological treatment; completely out of their mind paying 30k + to fly for an airline that treats pilots as subordinates.

Correct me if I'm wrong but work is something an employee gets paid for, not the other way around! Have any of yee SSTR's ever asked yourselves what the passengers in the back of the plane would really think of yee if it was announced to them that the pilots flying the aircraft each paid 30k for the seat on the aircraft and also paid for their pilots uniform. They would laugh their asses off at yeer pure stupidity!

The truth is, that the only certainty that exists for Ryanair pilots is that when retirement comes around they will be easy to identify. Long retired but still hanging around in their pilot uniforms the ass of it thread bare from wear! Contrast this with MOL and his management team living it up on their vast wealth and fat pensions all at the expense of their paying staff.

[YYZ]

And the entire staff at FR bow to your superior knowledge and intellect and pray for forgiveness.

YYZ

[Mikehotel152]

Correct me if I'm wrong but work is something an employee gets paid for, not the other way around!

I earned €35,000 after tax in my first 12 months at FR. In anyone's books that is not contrary to the basic principle of 'employment' to which you refer and is preferable to unemployment.

and also paid for their pilots uniform

Small change and tax deductable. In the 5 years I worked in another industry I bought 2 new suits a year and lunch each day out of my taxed income. Free uniforms and food? I would advise people to join the Air Force if those are their primary criteria for a job.

The FR bashers think that it is bad for aviation as a whole.

Everybody agrees with that statement but the industry has already evolved. Do you think that the subsidised aviation industry of the past could hope to survive into the 21st Century? A state subsidised travel service for the monied classes that rewarded pilots in the postwar era with generous terms and conditions surviving in the iPad world like an aerial Gentleman's Club? FR and others brought airline travel to the masses. Terms and conditions for pilots have rationalised. Get used to it.


I stand by my earlier comments about the 'exodus' of pilots out of FR.

[Mikehotel152]

All true Vexed, but there are few TP jobs around. None when I finished training.

[as17]

Quite right Vexed, it would not be possible for all the pilots in FR to be working in flybe/Scotair etc instead. Anyone blaming the new guys for degrading T&Cs- I would probably guess that you have forgotten what it is like to be unemployed and with £60000 worth of debt as you sit there in the cockpit of your 777 drinking tea and doing the Times crossword.

[MichaelOLearyGenius]

vexed

All very well and good about doctors paying $200k for the training in the USA but last time I looked, Ryanair were flying out of European airports.

In Scotland at least, and some of the Scandy countries there are are no tuition fees and medical grads usually leave with very little debt.

Yes I know a small turboprop operation can not "hire" on the scale of FR however you seem to forget that if everyone had put their foot down and said NO to SSTR the airlines would have no option than to provide the training for their cadets if they wanted their airline to grow.

Unfortunately it was FR who were the most public about these schemes and what started as a trickle of SSTR cadets soon became a flood in the FR era.

Now what I cant't get round is now all you guys that have bought your way into the RHS you are complaining about the T&C's you have to work under, if in your mind this is a different era of flying with budgetary constraints and SSTR the norm, then consequently in that case six sector days, 35min turnarounds, unstable roster, inconsistant basing policy, unscrupulous management etc etc ad nauseum, should also be the norm in this cost conscious industry.

Realistically all the people bitching about working for FR, or should I say Brookfield Accountancy Firm, were a cog in the wheel that produced these so called T&C's. So my point is, you helped create this situation, you went in with your eyes open, you paid $250 to submit an application, so stop complaining about it, as you so rightly say the industry has changed and **** T&C's go hand in hand with SSTR.

[Mikehotel152]

Ah, MOLG, so you describe recently recruited FR pilots as 'cogs' yet maintain a derisory attitude towards us. I suggest you start criticising and attacking the driving engine behind the changes, not some of the victims. I suggest you contact your namesake and all those pilots at 'established' airlines who have acquiesced in the changes.

Find me a pilot at any airline who doesn't moan about some aspect of his job. It's in the nature of the beast to complain, in every industry...

[MichaelOLearyGenius]

Vexed.

I think the FR bashing is totally relevant to this thread as as has been discussed, you entered with reduced t&c's and your exodus plan is because of these reduced t&c's, a bit of hypocrisy there. Also the old fashioned Ba bond saw you pay nothing and get normal salary. If you left within 3 years you had to pay what you owed.

Mike hotel

I referred to you as cogs in the downfall of t&c's not cogs in an airline operation, so indeed it was derisory.

As I say we are all going to disagree in this, I think you sold your soul for personal gratification, you lot think it is the best thing you ever did yet are on here Bitching about how you are being treated by management. The cockrell has definitely come home to roost

[73addict]

It is amazing we are still arguing about whose fault the current T&C's are along with the nature of those individuals who took on this enormous debt. We can all agree to disagree on various issues around these points but the key is there will never be a shortage of people willing to join the SSTR. FR is a company that anyone joins or should join with their eyes fully open and a clear goal in mind. Whatever your opinions about your treatment you cannot complain having signed up to it. But you can have a plan to do something about it, like many are. I personally have a good friend who did the SSTR thing and spent 3 years in FR before moving to Emirates on the 777. I would say that it worked out for him perfectly. He got what he needed from FR and had an exit strategy which he followed through. Now he can relax in a company he wanted to be in and reap the rewards. Of course this is not for everyone but one example of using the system.
And yes no matter where we are we will always complain about something as was alluded to earlier it is our nature. Combine that with experience and a little perspective and, at least some of, the complaining should slowly subside. For everyone complaining remember all those made unemployed during the recession with no severance of any kind. Now complain about your pay and multi sector days!!!! Many would bite you arm off to be where you are!
WHOOOOOOOOSAAAAAAAAH!

[Mikehotel152]

I referred to you as cogs in the downfall of t&c's not cogs in an airline operation, so indeed it was derisory.

That's merely semantics bearing in mind we are all suffering and none of us actually started the trend.

I think you sold your soul for personal gratification

You would have done exactly the same thing in my position.