Just to add a some pragmatism here. Maybe 300 have left and maybe they (RYR) are short of Captains. They already have wet leased aircraft for the summer. It would not be to hard to wet lease more and follow up with the usual bullsh*t to the shareholders ..."due to unprecedented demand for Ryanair's low fare's..blah blah I think Micko and they boys need a really good summer to placate institutional shareholders who are looking at the returns EZY are making !..Either way it will make no difference to how RYR treat their staff. Staff are expenses not assets in RYR world !

Well I've seen the latest STN T&C's and there's an option to have a 'summer roster' giving extra sector pay and 'guaranteed' summer leave, I think it's very clear that they are struggling to crew the summer schedule. But they will NEVER show a chink in their armour and admit it. Their own ego and arrogance would see them run the airline into the ground rather than accept a fair and professional relationship with their own Pilots.

As an aside, I watched with a mixture of disbelief and cringing at the latest attempt to play catch up with easyJet, the TV commercials last night. I think O'Brien & Bellew (in their new roles in the sales & marketing dept.) must be behind this piece of Hollywood genius. Same old, same old, cheap, tacky and I'd like to see them filming at the boarding gate in STN for an Italian flight when all the pax turn up with two big cabin bags, that should make good TV!

You shall reap what you sow, and I hope O'Leary is going to be forced out sooner rather than later.

For the benefit of the Ryanair lawyers trawling Pprune for libel/slander, The above is all just my humble opinion of course. :mad: you very much!

"They just decided to lower requirement for upgrade to 2400h ! Nice and easy ..."

Latest I have seen on the Base TRE desk in STN is still 2800 hours. I have heard no mention of 2400 hours. There is a lot of " someone told me this and that" but a lot of it is often not true.

In regards to shortage of Captains, I think they are in a shortage at the moment, many captains telling me they are being asked to work days off and a lot of captains telling me they are going to Etihad or Norwegian 787.

But new upgrades are being kept on as first offciers for about a month after completing the command upgrade. Strange but true and I have no idea as to the reason...

This latest effort is a sign of desperation, unfortunately it hasn't been thought through enough by management and, in my opinion will have little effect.

Ryr has seen unprecedented resignations recently due to the heavy recruitment of Norweigan, now things seem to be picking up in the sandpit this will only add to their woes. The RPG have brought various things to the attention of shareholders who are now putting pressure on management to do something to stop the haemorrhaging of experienced guys to competitors.

10 eur / hr pay rise from 2400 hrs to command is a tactic to tie guys in who are just about to be eligible to apply to Etihad and Emirates.
There will be some kind of contract involved, as there is no way are they going to just give guys an extra 10 eu an hour only for them to foxtrot oscar when something better turns up.
Its also worth baring in mind that this extra pay for the 6 months or so that you are being 'coached' prior to doing the course will ultimately mean a bigger pay CUT when you take the command.
It also doesn't cover the time that you will be receiving no pay whilst in the sim and classroom on the CU course.

I think its a JAA requirement for guys to have >3000 hrs to be in command of a Jar25 aircraft. Might be completely wrong but would explain why guys are going back to the rhs for a month or so. I also heard mention that it was to work out the notice of their BRK contracts prior to going onto a RYR contract.

There is a very simple way Ryr can stop guys leaving; Introduce a fair contract for everyone where the pay is inline with competitors. And, introduce a fair and transparent basing system.

We've lost 60 in the last 3 years to retirements, leavers and lost medicals, with 550 total. I make that 3.6% a year on average.

An established airline with a standard workforce demographic is likely to lose a small percentage to but the locos probably have a far younger average pilot age, so those categories of retirements are going to have a minimal impact, and consequently where there is a far, far higher turnover, something else must be going on.

For what its worth and what I was told;

Command hours are normally set by the airlines insurance company and with approval of the relevant Authority.

My previous UK airline; 2000hrs for turbo prop command

4000hrs for jet command

Reason for 4000hrs for jet was because the jet was a new type to the company.

737 Jockey
 

Where is the like button? After a long week of earlies that did make me chuckle. PPRuNe gold.

It all comes down to cost base
 

At the end of the day FR still have by a huge margin a lower cost base than virtually all other European airlines, indeed FR describe themselves as a "ultra low cost airline" the recent change in strategy to move to more main steam airports and reduced baggage fee's and other charges will no doubt over time nibble away at their cost advantage, but we are talking of a few cents at best, the biggest cost impact would come from addressing the main reason that many experienced FR pilots are calling it a day, which from conversations i've had seem to be lack of certainty of the pilot tax & social insurance position, lack of standby pay, lack of holiday pay and a basing policy that can lead to you living out of a suitcase, the actual money earned doesn't seem bad, but the rub is that throwing more money at the problem through increased sector pay will not address the real issues.

Unfortunately when you know the cost of everything but don't understand the value of anything then this is what happens, I personally don't see it changing whilst ever MOL is in charge, pilots are a cost they detract from the bottom line and add nothing to the business seems to be the mantra, perhaps it's no bad thing, their low cost and prices seems to attract a larger share of the bottom feeders in pax terms, the people who benefit from this approach appear to be FlyDubai & Norwegian and the sand pitt T7 operators, funny old world.

And while you are all discussing how to improve pilot conditions, you don't realise or you don't care about the fact that any increase in pilot conditions directly means a decrease in cabin crew conditions who have far less capability to organise themselves.

It's probably the later, never met such egocentric characters than in an FR flight deck.

LNIDA

So you are saying that the quality of training is better in Ryanair than it is in the other carriers you quote because they (FR) need to do more of it? This could equally imply the training is worse as it takes the trainer double the time to achieve the desired result! I don't believe the standards of training are anything less than very good in all of the airlines you quote.

Could it be that the other carriers are generally taking on a more experienced pilot/better quality recruit in the first place, and hence doesn't need to waste expensive training resource teaching grandma to suck eggs?

What these stats imply at first glance (if they are true) is that FR take significantly more sectors to get their recruits to a certain standard i.e. where the F/O no longer needs to fly with a trainer. However, from the above posts it appears that this may however be cost driven, so in reality no conclusion can be drawn about either training standards or the standard of candidates.

Rushed approach
 

I think the 80 sectors has far more to do with the money that is to paid to pilots prior to being line checked than the quality of the pilots.

FRyup82, of course yo are right. Instead of cabin crew trying to get together and fight their corner, the RYR pilots should instead take huge pay cuts, work days off unpaid, have no time at home with their family and not fight to make sure their taxes are paid legally just to the cabin crew can get a pay rise. I have no doubt that if their pilots roll over, RYR's management will be so pleased that they will give the money saved to the cabin crew. In the mean time, any group trying collectively to improve life for their families, themselves and their colleagues and trying to ensure their taxes are paid correctly where due should be regarded as insufferably selfish.:ugh:

FRyup82, you are an arse.

In my airline 40 line sectors is typical for ex-CTC or MPL pilots, and that applies right back three decades or so when we first took c. 200 hr pilots onto jets for the first time.

Rushed approach
 

I think the answer is a lot more complicated than that, i.e. poor training/candidates.

Lets start with what i would call "willing to fail syndrome" by this i mean there is a large body of people wanting to see MOL/FR fail, these range from other airlines, pilots and of course the press who would love to report a smoking hole in the ground with a harp poking out.

To counter this, the company following a few incidents some years back take a very very strict line on SOP compliance, this is IMO far easier to achieve with fresh blood not tainted by previous experience of other airlines. They know only the FR way

Route threats

FR fly into far more secondary airports then most airlines, often with only NPA available which means they a) have to know what they are doing & B) get more practice at doing it, RNAV approaches using LNAV/VNAV is second nature.

Cost of training

An F/o is required in the RHS whether he/she is under training or not, my understanding is that FR F/o get less per sector when under training than after? so it is actually cheaper than using a regular F/o also the F/o having some how stumped up the funds for training in the first place tend to be focused and keen.

Quality of trainers

More difficult to answer, but they sure get a lot of practice

Quality of training

Well i can only say that the quality and depth of knowledge particularly tech knowledge is by a magnitude better than the average that i have observed with the average of pilots that have come from elsewhere.

90%+ Of accident reports that i have reviewed occurred because of a failure of one or more of three elements, in order these are

1) SOP understanding and compliance/discipline
2) CRM
3) TEM Threat error management


I think FR understand the rule book on safe flying, when one reviews the daily posting on Aviation Herald's web site and how infrequently Ryanair, easyJet & Norwegian feature, even more so given the huge number of sectors flown says volumes.

Of course having new single type fleets, with all the latest safety toys all helps

Ryanair cadets will of course need more sectors because they are not type rated, but you are painting onto a fresh canvas, you are not having to undo someone else's work.

I'm no apologist for FR, far from it, i think they could increase safety even further by addressing some of the absurd employment practices at little or no cost much as they have done with the tweaks to passenger T&C's but lets be clear it is by any standard a very safe airline.

My understanding is that if a pilot needs the toilet a cabin crew member goes inside the flight deck to guard against pilot incapacitation with the other pilot locked outside trying to fumble with door code and waiting 30 sec whilst the guy inside is slumped over the column with the A/P off and in a dive.

Has that ever happened? Not a problem in the Airbus :ok:

Wy are they wet leasing 3 737 classics from air contractors in Dublin for the summer, they must be really really short.....

They are also leasing two 737 400s out of Slovakia.

Again... why is this such an unusual thing for airline pilots? Is this really the bar we're using to define exceptional pilots?

An NPA should not be taxing for ANY commercial pilot. If it is, you're on the wrong side of the cockpit door.

Most pilots at the very large airline that I now work for :mad: themselves at the mention of an NPA.