Cadet in Ryanair or Vueling?
 

Hi all,

Given both options and suceeding in both selection processes, would you prefer joining Vueling or Ryanair as a new cadet without experience, right out of school?

Facts:
- I'm a tall person and I've been told that Airbus is way more comfortable than the Boeing.
- Vueling's main hub is closer to my home
- Ryanair's salary is way better than Vueling
- Ryanair's roster is better than Vueling


I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, thank you guys!

Greetings

There are always 3 most important things:
- base
- roster
- money

In case of ryr roster and money are good, the base initially might be not the one you want, but recently from what I heard new fo´s are getting transfers in 1 year normally.

Try to ask ryr about which base they offer you...

Another issue is vueling offering 6 moths contract or permanent?

Chances of the taxman knocking on your door are also way better than Vueling

When you are out of flight school you will choose what comes first because you desperately need to make hours and if you build jet time it's golden hours. You'll have plenty of time to change between Airbus and Boeing during your career, so don't think about this. The most important factor is always quality of life, not even money.

And by the way I know a guy tall 2.10 meters and he's quite happy on the 737.

A chance which can be totally eliminated by paying ones taxes as they are owed, instead of sponging off society like a leach.

Being a Captain on a RYR direct contract I don't know really anything about contract options they offer to new FO. But from what I hear from my very very young collegues in the cockpit they are sometimes ending up with a salary of a directly employed RYR captain which is awfully good for a green boy learning to fly an airliner imho.

The 737 is THE MOST unergonomic aircraft I have ever flown in my life. And I was PIC on the entire CRJ series(beautiful cockpit, excellent PFD, MFD, and fantastic EICAS that I miss most on this 1960's style 737, even they added some sceens to make it look better), A300-600 and as well a "jungle jet"(ERJ145, miserable aircraft, cockpit still better then the NG one). Most likely this cockpit(including this very very bad seats) will make me change eventually on an Airbus again.
For a first job I would not overrate the cockpit, especially the 737 is an much easier to understand aircraft as an Airbus(after all they ARE designed by french which always prefer the more complicated then easy solution :-) ), nice to fly as well. Even that the RYR way of flying them has not much to do with real flying, but that is another story and not important for a newby.

Base. Well, I have seen a lot of "out of base" FO going through my base(which was my first choice, so easier for DEC to get their base of choice, of course) but on the other hand a lot of them told me that they are sitting already at their base of choice or expecting a transfer very soon. RYR realized that they have to get moving otherwise they will loose even more pilots. Putting them in the base they want to be is one of the steps they are doing.

Met a former collegue which left our old company to go to Vueling(BCN base) but then decided to join RYR. He said it is still much better then Vueling for him(just to mention that, have no comparison).

In a nutshell: RYR offers:
- better pay
- i think cadets dont need to pay anymore for TR, just bonded
-normally fast base transfer
- "easier" aircraft
- better roster(fully agree, the 5/4 is fanstastic AS LONG you are at your homebase. If you need to commute it might get VERY exhausting)

Hope I could help. I did not mention RYR management, I think everyone in the business knows this guys. They promised they will change, I would be careful with that. My expectations are low, but hey, wonders do happen from time to time, right? :rolleyes:

Well. Yes. But this is the case with most biz jets jockeys as well. Having as well experience in that (dark) sector of aviation I know how a lot of this guys "handle" their taxes(even knew some that got social insurance as unemployed because they claimed to have no job back home....).

In RYR you can avoid that situation by insisting in a direct employement, which DEC's usually get offered(and most of them would not join on an agency contract, me included). But as well more and more "agency" FO are getting offered now direct employment. Of course, the salary goes down massively for this FO, but of course you avoid unwelcome visits from the taxman.

After all a personal choice. AND IF you do it right, even on agency contracts, you have nothing to fear if they start checking you out.....

Ryanair.

Despite my well documented hatred for the company, the money is good for a cadet and the training is world leading. I left some time ago, but everywhere I go in various sim centres around the world I, and any other ex Ryanair colleagues, always get a "oh you're ex-Ryanair? Great! You'll have no problems with this course. It's always a pleasure teaching ex-Ryanair pilots, you guys just get it".

It's set me up for my career, the training is so well recognised. It's even better than that at legacy carriers, but such carriers won't (and the pilots who have been at legacy airline for +30 years) won't like to admit it. Some airlines won't sim check Ryanair pilots during assessments, but they will everyone else.

The 737 is a handful to fly, but if you fly that well and get a good grounding (ie at Ryanair), then you will find that any other modern jet is an absolute piece of cake.

Some airlines won't sim check Ryanair pilots during assessments, but they will everyone else. Go on, I’ll bite... which airlines are these??

Interesting. Are sim checks done on autopilot these days?

Chances of the taxman knocking on your door are also way better than Vueling


What a load of pish..
Tax are individual responsibility, pay what you are due where it's due and you'll never have to worry about the tax man.

@pudoc

Well, RYR is as it is. We ALL know what RYR is, it fits for some(for me it does, after more than 25 years in airline aviation I finally can go home after work, sleep in my own bed, see my kids grow up and NOT sit in a bloody hotel somewhere around the bloody world. For guys like me RYR is great. Ignoring the HQ BS of course as much as you can which is very easy if you are far away from DUB(which I am ;-) ) on a as small as possible base. Then you are fine.

Money is indeed good for any cadet, nearly no carrier can match that for a very green pilot.You need to value that. As for the "world leading training" you mentioned.... well, if you are a bit experienced and aged it is not really that world class. It is a stupid SOP training course going on for nearly 3 months(NTR) and in that time they barely teach you HOW to fly that so easy to handle(but very unergonomic, cannot stress that enough) 737. Even linetraining fails here very often because they NEED to work through that stupid linetraining workbook so you do all kinds of approaches but do not learn the most common ones properly BEFORE they release you to the line.
After that the real challenge starts and it needs a lot of experience to manage that first few months(as a Captain at least) to learn that bloody thing finally by YOURSELF. After that you are fine. Partly of experience, mainly because the 737 is a very easy aircraft, it is american after all and there it must be simple(which is no offence but actually a good thing in aviation if you remember test pilots dying in an A320 accident...).

I can understand that legacy carriers(worked for 2 of them by myself, both unfortunately are no more) doubt the quality of RYR training. I do. But it is just another thing you deal with as an RYR pilot which most likely makes us the most flexible guys in aviation business. And we can learn ANY SOP after we could deal with moron RYR ones(245 kts during descent, *facepalm* and omg ^^, and that in a jet aircraft). And that stupid "rings", nobody else uses them for approaches except us, heard some funny stories from recruitment sims when RYR cadets wanted to enter them and the checker did not let them :ok: ...

@45989

The 737 is indeed a very simple aircraft(to fly). IF you have a problem it becomes very aged. ANY modern aircraft(and yes, the 737 is NOT a modern aircraft, despite the "NG"^^) does a better job in feeding information to the pilots by EICAS and even some of them with ECAM(Airbus) actions and electronic checklists. The 737 has nothing in that direction, you need to go searching for lights.... Go/No go decissions are harder on this type then anything modern because you see(on modern aircraft) the problem within 1 second on the CAS without turning your head around. But the flying is simple, the mechanics behind as well. That is very true.
Unfortunately Boeing was to coward to design a "new" 737 based on a 777/787 cockpit and really make it a NG or MAX. Like that is still the old crap it is and always will be. And just because they did not want to make it a new typerating - so stupid.

Btw - worked as a forklift driver when I was young, many many many years ago financing my licenses. Not so easy as you think, especially if handling hazardous materials and loading them as fast as possible onto a truck. Being pushed by the boss AND the truckdriver to speed up a bit :mad: .... I am more relaxed in my 737 then I was on that forklift my friend.... :E

I know 3 who joined in the last 12 months with no sim check.

Absolutely, nothing should be guaranteed like that. The 3 I know who joined without a sim check were FO's, any of the capt's i know that joined did do a sim check.