Mr O'Leary can say he will recruit pilots from wherever he wants. There will still be a shortage of trainers to get them onto the line - and there's a shortage of trainers to train any new trainers. It's a spiral that will be very very difficult now for Ryanair to get out of, and we will either see aircraft parked up or mass cancellations again next Summer.

Commenting on the ongoing uncertainty Mr O’Leary said that while the airline doesn’t have a pilot shortage, other airlines are poaching pilots. It therefore plans to recruit pilots from both Air Berlin and Alitalia.

Speaking on a call with analysts, Mr O’Leary also said the company plans to introduce pilot loyalty bonuses in an effort to keep its crew.

No one would be able to "poach" hundreds of pilots from Ryan Air if they had better T&C at Ryan Air...

€20.000.000 divided by 4.500 pilots would be a €4,444 pay rise each, which could've avoided the situation maybe?

Add to that public mistrust in the airline, all the people not booking at the moment, 20M is a small number IMO, they are going to loose much more in the coming weeks.

"It therefore plans to recruit pilots from both Air Berlin and Alitalia."

I wonder if the Air Berlin and Alitalia pilots are aware of this wonderful offer.

Cue massively over inflated binding bid for Alitalia just to get the pilots.

And right till this day experienced FOs are being charged €35,000 for a TR that costs the company no more than $12,000. RYR deserves everything it gets.

All well and good the erc getting together. Shame for the contractors who have no such forum.

It will cost way more than 20m euro. The lost goodwill alone will cost that at least. Would you really want to be booking a ryanair flight in the run up to xmas if you were not sure it would get you there?

And imagine the lost money from the lost scratch card sales on those cancelled flights!!! Sorry, lost charity donations I meant to say. Because of course it goes to charity.

The charitable MOL horse racing fund.

The press need to start digging a little deeper into this, as ex Ryan I'm glad to be out of it and have a more relaxed pace where I am. Its the trainers that are suffering at my current airline and suffering terribly. The line Joe's have it easy. Ryan was hard work even on the 5/4.

€20.000.000 divided by 4.500 pilots would be a €4,444 pay rise each, which could've avoided the situation maybe?

I doubt it. That is 2 weeks pay for a proper pilot. Any acceptees must be cheap-skates.

It's also funny how popular (:}) MOL seems to be on a personal level on here. No one generally minds a smart businessman, but I guess it's how they go about it?

Apologies for the poor quality, but I do like this Ryanair Song:

https://youtu.be/c_nqwAKCq-Q

IMO this had more to do with politics (unions) than flight safety - Colgan Air is an example of an accident due to extreme fatigue not inexperience.

And O'Reilly can simply show Ryanair's safety record and shut down the debate.

True dat

Airlines of every shape and size know that the global pax/tourist flyer market (which is expanding at a phenomenal rate, esp in Asia) will tolerate almost anything when it comes to getting them to exotic destinations that their grandparents would only ever see in James Bond movies. It is not just MOL and Ryanair that know this...they all do and as profit -seeking businesses it is their primary function to exploit this to the best return for their shareholders and/or owners.

It is the regulators job to ensure they play by the rules, as it is in so many industries.

As for the individual...well we have freedom of choice both as pilots and as pax.

If you don't like Ryanair, don't work for them and don't fly with them.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but certainly today a great deal of humble pie (sincere...I doubt it) is being eaten. Which suggests to me a slight degree of panic, and I suspect the fear of a mass migration of pilots to their immediate competitors, may be their biggest concern. Concern over screwing over the masses...nah, they all do it that, BA just a few months ago.

Not able to answer your question but just need to point out that the common view in house, at least from pilots earlier is that the ERC (Employee Rep Committee) it is merely an exercise of ticking the box that Ryanair is having negotiations whith staff while indented to be totally ineffective.

It will be interesting to see how they dig themselves out of this mess.

The simplistic nature of their model mixed with such a toxic company culture will make it hard to recover from this.

I hear they are already working on deferring deliveries, so maybe a severe cut to the program might get the show back on the road. The problem is lead times in getting experience, training trainers, and getting training done might push them a bit too far.

I remember in 2005 when they were chartering in a lot of other airlines to recover the program, but the airline was much smaller back then. Around that time easyjet was offering golden hellos of 30,000 gbp for type rated pilots. Unfortunately for Ryanair it looks like Norwegian has soaked up most of the sub charter capacity available.

Maybe the easy option out for them would be to buy Monarch and just have them fly large parts of the program until they can get on their feet again.

One can't help but have a bit of schadenfruede for odreary, this has certainly been building for a long time.

Airline management just hate paying pilots "too much". Twas ever thus, just read Ernest K. Gann's "Fear is the Hunter". He cites the management greed from the 1930's, forcing pilots to ply their trade wherever they could.

The chickens are finally coming home to roost. And hopefully no big crashes will force the issue. Employ enough pilots, having trained them to high standards, and pay them very well. That will result in higher fares, greater safety, and no nonsense like walk-outs, strikes, grounding of new aircraft, or flight cancellations.

And people will pay a few quid more for their tickets. Airlines will pay their pilots salaries of a few thousand more. And all may then be well. I doubt it...

People will always pay, even if more expensive.
Travelling by air is not for poor. Sound harsh, but to me, poor take a car not a plane. No need to pay 20 euros for a flight. even 200eu is cheap actually and anybody can afford it by saving some money.

Why would you go from RYR to Norwegian? You are still a contractor. Money still isn't great. Benefits arent either. I mean, there must be better options right now?

If they don't have a pilot shortage then we won't see new adverts for pilot recruitment. We won't see new incentives to entice people and we won't see excuses like "new airframes" as reasons for needing to recruit...

And they won't be trawling Brazil for EU qualified citizens with B737 ratings.