This is the surest evidence that ryanair and its crews are the lowest of the low.

err thanks for that Grim , i presume you include yourself in this description then?

As for RYR opperating the flights I would imagine that it is all total BS, surely the Lingus management would use any other company on earth to cover flights as opposed to giving it to RYR and letting MOL score some major publicity. Even cancelling the flights would appeal more.

As for the main issue, it is bound to lead to a future split and gradual reduction of T&C's. So good luck to all Aer Lingus pilots, if you guys can't make a stand then theres no hope for the rest of us!!!

Taken from RTE,

Aer Lingus to use Ryanair planes during strike

Saturday, 18 August 2007 10:31

Aer Lingus has accepted Ryanair's offer of two planes to provide cover for the 48-hour strike planned by pilots for next Tuesday and Wednesday.
A spokesman for Aer Lingus said the company will pay full commercial rate for the planes.
Aer Lingus said the owner of the planes they lease will also provide the crew.

Aer Lingus Chief Executive, Dermot Mannion, said earlier that there would be no going back on the decision for now. He also issued a direct appeal to Aer Lingus pilots not to go ahead with next week's strike.

Seems a tad bit odd and ironic that they choose to except ryanair's offer considering they dont exactly see eye to eye and it was ryanair who suggested the EGM . O'Leary must be loving this.....

How,how are there going to be transfers between the bases soon airgirl?!?

All pilots paid the same at a base. Aircraft will be moved out of Dublin and based at Belfast, Gatwick, .... and Dublin will absolutely lose aircraft to these bases (because it will have a higher cost base). No more aircraft means no more commands, jobs or career prospects in Dublin ever. There will never be an opportunity to bid back to Dublin as it will for ever be in surplus and fighting a rear guard action to protect its own T&C's. Result, the net degradation of T&C's at Aer Lingus.

As to your last point. It is simply not true. DM has not committed to say it will have no effect because he knows it to be incorrect he is doing this to reduce his cost base. Now wake up, no one wants this strike but DM and if we are to succeed then all of us need to be resolute. Hold the line, airgirl.

DM has finally lost the plot well and truly. I am sure MOL must be wringing his hands together right now.

I bet the two aircraft are already in at the paint shop being sign written with a nice anti AL slogan. Perhaps leaflets to be handed out to the affected pax offering them discounted fares for life. Just like his millionth pax got all those years ago (not). You couldn't have written the script better and DM has taken it hook line and sinker. Its almost laughable if it wasn't so sad that this bloke was in charge of the airline.

Ryanair pilots
 

Just a thing of note for those debating the FR "assistance":

IALPA asked all IFALPA pilot associations to extend full co-operation to their employers in putting on extra service in/out of Ireland on Tuesday and Wednesday next. This includes IALPA members in FR.

I do accept it will be interesting to discover where those crews are being sourced within FR...

...either way the only way the EI pilots will win is to stick together!!!!

Maybe we need another thread for this issue? The question of what happens if and when the Fr aircraft pitch up to do the Aer Lingus flights is an interesting one. There will be no need to cross picket lines as the aircraft will simply fly in from elsewhere, pick up the PAx and depart for LHR or wherever. I can't see how this can be stopped.
Sad to say, there will be enough FR pilots to man these flights, ad infinitum. Remember, most of them are not even in a union and no matter how much they dislike the idea, they will do as they are told, as they always have done in the past.
RYR are probably in talks with easyJet management too, if the rumours about a strike in orangeland are true!
God help us all!

Good Luck Lads
 

All the crews I bump into around Asia, think this is a righteous stand. There is an overwhelming deferential respect for the EI pilot group and this action.

I'm looking forward to me days off in Ireland from the Asian grind and arrive back in DUB (I hope!) on Tuesday night, where and when can I stand with the lads and show some support?

Respect from the deep blue sea....

Thanks for the support.

If you are in Dublin, you can find a map to the IALPA office (A good place to start) by looking at the bottom of the contact page on the IALPA website

http://www.ialpa.net/contact.html

the grim repa:

"Aer lingus to use two ryanair scab aircraft to operate during next weeks (sic) strike".

"The names of those operating will be noted".

I think you need to revise your definition of scab. To my mind, the definition of scab would be an Aer Lingus pilot who crossed an official Aer Lingus picket line or else a pilot, not employed by Aer Lingus, who crossed the line to sit in an Aer Lingus pilot's seat in an Aer Lingus aircraft.

How you can use the term for wet lease aircraft and crew is beyond me. You may remember the Australian pilots' strike of 1989? Ansett had to wet lease aircraft from all over the world including some from Britannia for example. Are you telling me that the Britannia crews were scabs for flying their own aircraft on a wet lease? As, I am sure you are well aware, Britannia is a BALPA company. Maybe they don't agree with your definition either?

I have never worked for Britannia, Ryanair or Aer Lingus but I think we should get our definitions right.

Has it ever occured to you that the more wet leasing that Aer Lingus have to do the better? It is a very expensive exercise and usually gets them back to the negotiating table faster.

Finally, why should you note the names of wet leasing pilots? Are you planning to take them down a dark alley in Dublin and duff them up? If so, I think you might need some help.

I hear O'L is sourcing IALPA FR members to crew the AL flights with IALPA FR reserves.....JEEZ this this has all the ingredients of a blood bath.

Ah it all makes sense. MOL must be concerned that with the history of the DUB based FR guys joining IALPA/REPA and taking him to the labour court that if the AL pilots were successful then he might have more on his hands to deal with later on. Hence use the FR IALPA guys and try and get a quick score with the media. Such sad little games.

OW22, you are quite obviously blinkered as again you answer nothing which An Paddy Eile has put to you. I might be a little presumptuous but I think you have no Legacy carrier experience and as such you have never had T+C's that are worth protecting. You have only tried to discredit part of the post while the thrust of the post is quite obviously right.

It seems from your type of posting that you might be working for a Irish contract agency. Do you not see that a good proportion of pilots do not want to contract and want fair and well set out T+C's.

Anyway to answer your points;

BFS and DUB is the same local market. There is realistically no difference. This point has already been answered anyway by An Paddy Eile.

Sigh... Yes pilots in EI are having their T+C's attacked. Why can't the BFS base be under the same T+C's? It is the same market and it is regulated and contracted under Irish law so why does it not follow the same conditions? Again it has no bearing of where the base is. A base in Stockholm would be more expensive than Cork but you get paid the company rate. If you don't like it you don't go to that base, simple.

I'm not emotional at all to this matter, but I do see the dangers of what this type of management practice can do to pilots and their jobs and profession. On the matter of proof, I have given the example of FR and Easy with relation to Easy's Spanish contracts and FR's multi base, multi contract drive down on base by base costs and T+C's. Look at the current pay deal mess FR is on with multiple contracts and agreement after agreements being broken by management. Hence the court cases FR currently have ongoing with its staff and past cases. Both these companies are doing this type of practice to try and drive down labour costs. It in turn has an affect on the other bases. I have seen this first hand. The management play each base off against the other. I understand where you are coming from in some respect OW22 but as somebody who is currently in the middle and who is and has experienced this type of behaviour and action. It is a defined strategy to lower T+C's across the board. As a retired pilot you must be able to see that people are more closely involved in this and can see it for exactly what it is, more so than yourself? Pilots are posting here who have prior experiences of this strategy. What is your problem with believing your past fellow colleagues who are telling you that this is exactly what is happening? :(

I have answered that above. I am not guessing and have seen it first hand. This strategy has been played out on me and other colleagues.

Answering some of dublingirls comments;

This is exactly the same as what FR is doing. You get paid a little more at the start so it leads to you enjoying the base for quick short term and even possibly medium term gain but in the long run you will suffer greatly. This deal seeks to entice you to stay but there are no good viable long terms prospects with a pension being a bi-word for a joke. You also don't necessarily progress quicker the harder you work. Also who decides who is working harder and to a better quality? What justifies promotion etc? We will all be somewhere in our latter years dublingirl and we should all realise that. This is a point in life where we will all be. This is the point where you will be preparing for your even later years but now without the ability or resources to do this as you would have liked. :{ There is also the point that this is not just about wages. There is a lot more to T+C's than your pay. Which is what quite a bit of this argument is about.

I will ask again what is the problem with offering the same T+C's as the rest of the company?

Will that be the same bit of paper the old agreement was signed on? Because they just ripped that up and threw it in the bin......:\ If they do not stick to an agreement how can you trust them on another agreement? :confused:

They are not coming anyway if the pilots can help it. This is what pilots on here are pointing out and hence why EI pilots are striking. :ugh: This is a blatant attack by management on current DUB T+C's. It is quite clear to what either sides reasons for action is. ;)

They are not the same market. They have totally different economic realities and it wasn't addressed/ You can get a 4 bedroom house in Belfast for £215K or EUR316!! And that is in an upcoming area. Do you know what you would pay for that house in Dublin?

Even in an upmarket area a 5 bed house is £400K or EUR588....! Do you know what a 5 bed house would cost in Castleknock, Malahide, Portmarnock even in Swords...? That is a massive difference between the two areas just on house costs. Have you ever seen the difference between the prices of cars between here and the UK? There is a massive difference.

Are you really asking that?? So again, a US multinational should have exactly the same terms of employment offered here as they do in the US? Even though there is a different tax system, fiscal environment etc etc??

Again you're trying to excuse the actions here of AL pilots when there is no excuse for this. Simplistic guessing as to what might happen in the future....

And yet again, tumbleweed blows through this thread when the word "Customers" is mentioned. No pilot here seems willing to discuss what it means to them or their possible future attitude to AL. Amazing.

AL does not exist simply for your benefits and your pay packet.

All this talk of house prices is very enlightening yet you still seem to fail to grasp the whole crux of the issue. That is the management of AL are going to one day undermine the entire pilot body of the airline and give them pay cuts if they are let away now.

From your profile it says you are a retired pilot. Perhaps you got out when the going was good and its a case of I am alright jack thanks. The same thing happened at BA when the pension was closed to new joiners. The old timers looked after themselves. All the AL pilots are fighting for is a fair deal for everyone, not a pay cut.

“Simplistic guessing”. Do you not trust your fellow pilots when they tell you something is happening to them or not? It is currently happening with other companies.... You might want to remove your friends and family from EI pilots if you can not trust them then….

If you choose to believe me or not matters little to the argument it just shows your stance to be untenable that CURRENT pilots are experiencing these phenomena. I find this quite sad as somebody else has said "you have fallen a long way". Again you choose not to answer anything put to you about FR or Easy or any other company for that matter!!!

This is the same local market and make no bones about that. This is also not just about wages it has everything to do with rostering agreements and many other things contained under T+C's as a whole........ Just on the point of local markets, I think it was quite well dealt with on post 45 and 56 of this thread. People understand what the implications are of getting cheap labour in to do the same job in the same "local market".

You must be able to understand globalism and global economics even on a basic level..... Surely you know that there is in many ways no "local markets", everything will affect each other. Even China is starting to increase pay levels as you have stated. Primarily because EU levels are so high so it has an effect on companies in China to increase pay levels to try to increase the amount of expats to crew a/c on order.

So would you agree that pilots in Stockholm should be paid more than Cork? Still not answered and not likely to be I think!

No it does not but it presumably puts food on pilots table!!! Anyone with half a brain cell understands what and how an airline affects an economy and what the effect of a strike will have on the economy and customer relations. Do you not think people do not consider this when making such a decision as extreme as resorting to strike action? Such a decision is not taken lightly.

Some customers might understand that EI pilots will not let there T+C's go down the toilet like many other companies have done and that the race to the bottom will be stopped for the benefit of all pilots... Does the consumer understand what ethical business practices are?

How much legacy experience did you say you had again? :}

VORTIME; Flight decks are more automated to increase and improve safety not to reduce pilot salaries and T+C's..... :=

Oneworld22 I quoted you in post 172:

And I asked you the following question:

You replied (post 174) by giving me a link to an IALPA Press Release. I have read the Press Release and it does not say what you stated. Can you please specify where it says what you claim?

Well BBT, it should be quite clear what the IALPA press release is stating, That after the IPO the cork base was to be given the same T's and C's as the DUB base and therefore that's what IALPA and co are going on with regards to BFS, a base in another country! And didn't the Flynn Report recommend that AL should be allowed to open new bases outside the Republic on local pay and conditions?

Alibaba, FR opening bases elsewhere in Europe has NOT driven down T's and C's at DUB.

You guys can continue to throw up smokescreens till the cows come home. You're like a Jackal pack, descending on anyone who dares disagree with you. And your mode of argument is to throw up red herrings everywhere. Giving us simplistic guesses at what might happen in the future. That's a ridiculous way to conduct labour relations.

And food grief, he mantions Customers but only to chastise them about undertsanfing "Ethical" business practices!! :p
Your hysterical meandering and simplistic guesswork and selfishness is leading this airline down the toilet. Reading some of the hysteria here, you'd swear Mannion was proposing 50% pay cuts and a 20% increase in hours or something!

Get a grip lads.

A pay cut is a pay cut. Is that simplistic enough for you?

Yes it has ask any FR pilot what happened in 2004 and how the bases are played off against each other. It is simplistic but it works to the detriment of everyone else.

Have you thought that the majority of posters might not agree with your point of view on this OW? Active professional pilots no less, in current airline employment. Unlike yourself….

Again you don't answer questions. Do you have a problem with answering them? :\

What pay cut???

And you don't answer questions on your customers. Because you don't give a toss about them. This is a about your selfishness and your willingness to do untold damage to your employer over a totally minor issue like slightly differing conditions on a base in another country,

It's a disgraceful way to behave towards your employer and your customers and again, I can tell you you have 0 public support on this. Yet you guys don't seem to care about that either...

Oneworld22, it may be what IALPA is going on about is clear (in your interpretation), but it is not what it says. Your interpretation is inconsistent with the facts as I understand them (and I posted above on the basis of reports in the Irish Times). The key fact seems to be that an argeement by Aer Lingus to engage in talks was broken - and I read the IALPA statement to which you referred me as being entirely consistent with that.

I prefer the Irish Times to your interpretations. And you certainly are not short of interpretations and opinionated, but questionable, assertions.