Ryanair Pilot Shortage
 

Apparently a problem has arisen with the Brazilians that RYR has recruited and there is now a sudden and urgent need for crew (FO's in particular).

I know this is a rumour network but surely we need more than the word 'apparently'?
Exactly what is it you are telling us?

Not so much a problem,more like a realisation that they are being screwed over by a bunch of gypsies like all the others and the false promises are now obvious even to them.So they are off to pasture new and fr trawls the !!!! holes of the world to look for their next victims.Who will it be next?

Ah, I'll go fly for them, if they decide to treat pilots like people and not revenue streams to be screwed for every penny possible!
I'd stay there for a couple of years if they wanna pay to TR me on one of their planes! :uhoh:

How can they be short of pilots when so many of thier existing flightcrew dont get anywhere near 900 hours flying, and I'm not saying 50 hours short, i'm talking 3,4, 5,hundred hours

Money talks- bullsh1t walks. I see lots of walking.:}

pressman, where are you based? and these people you speak about are any of them based at STN or all at small European bases?

Currently, no shortage of pilots.

Information based on hours rostered to work next month.

I'll back easymoney up, based on my roster for the next month (just published this afternoon) there is certainly no shortage at my base. Some of the days I have coming up are hardly worth going to work for!!

They are cutting back hard for the winter. For example, seven aircraft taken out of STN, and many routes having their frequencies reduced for the winter season. Same as many other airlines I guess.

No shortage of FO's willing to cut their own throats, but there's a very serious shortage of captains, hence the cutbacks. They can't get command time applicants as only the gash, low-houred or desperate come here now. Hence the attempted raid on Air Berlin, which failed miserably.
The command failure is well above 50%. Why? Because people are pushed into it with minimum (i.e. less than 3000) hours. And anyway the cream of the crop doesn't exactly choose ryr these days.

Hey, pay more, the problem will go away. I find that most problems are solved with a healthy dose of CASH

Pay from date of hire instead of once training is complete and they would have a shot at one more captain. I've been doing this too long to do anything for free!

Very true Camel. I know of a few new Captains who've gained their command and within six months have left, 2 to BA I know of.. Good on them! :}

With them offering €56,000 basic for upgrade Captains.
Why on earth would you want to stay.
The high pay airline, truly an urban myth.

1. Can you be employed as a 'contractor' through your own limited company, or is all 'contracting' done through Brookfield?


No. Only through Brookfield. Although it could be argued you are a contractor in name only. It is just a way for Ryanair to circumvent a whole load of Laws and Taxes. You work when they tell, take your holiday when they decide, you could work forever as a "contractor".

2. Is the 'fast-track' command option open to 'contract' First Officers, or just those employed directly by the company?

2. "Fast-Track" is a total myth. There is no structured established program. You may get your command after a year, you may not. There are not set steps, there are no progress points, there are no waiting lists. There is no evidence that I have seen that you will be put ahead of anyone with similar hours as you but who has more experience in Ryanair. How it all works is a mystery that you as a common or garden line pilot will not be privvy to the workings of. Command will come up eventually but from what I have seen it takes closer to two years then whatever it is FR are promising now. "Contractors" become Captains the same as Permanent F/Os, treatment in this respect is broadly the same.

3. Are recently employed pilots currently being offered bases at airports other than DUB and STN within the UK?

Again, somewhat of a mystery system. No published waiting lists. People are cutting each others throats to get to popular bases such as Scavsta and Chareleroi, and being refused. A cadet F/O joins and gets given them, even though they want STN or DUB. A base change seems to require frequent visits to a Manager in STN and wearing him down with requests/keeping your face familiar. DUB has been very popular for fresh meat off the production line but who knows what will happen if you join now? The conveyer might be pointed at a different base by then. Or it might not. Who knows?

4. With 4,000 hours, including 1,200 on the B737NG, what is the REALISTIC chance, all other things being equal, of being accepted on the 'fast-track' command course?

There is no such course. With those hours I would expect you to be offered a course after 2/3 recurrent sim sessions or close to 2 years. That has been my experience, witnessing the progress of my peers. There maybe exceptions

I loath the company as much as I like it. Frustrating as it is because with just a little effort from the company it could be a bloody good place to work.

Pros: I love the 5/3 roster and we will all eventually be pushed onto 5/4 which is really a sweet set up having experienced it a few times. I don't want Hotel rooms, I like to be home each night and I am. I have no desire for Long Haul as it destroys my body, I like the intensity of 4 sectors. I like flying into empty airfields, no traffic jams any runway I like for takeoff. I like the varied mix of nationalities, I find it interesting. I have moved bases a few times, the freedom to live in some of the very hot and sunny Southern European bases is a huge attraction. Britain is dirty, cold and expensive. There is a better life out there. I like that as a Cadet I will/have/ might go from 250 hr wonder to Captain in 3 years.

Cons: We could be here all night but the main topics. Aggresive hostile attiude towards Pilots, seen as a complete inconvenience to the company by the top Brass. Erosion of commanders authority. Constantly erroding terms and conditons, in every respect, almost daily. New Captains, which you hope to be are now going to be paid 40K STG/54K Euro basic. They chip away at block times etc so your sector pay which is half your salary is getting lowered by 25% sometimes a month. No rights, due to no Union or Pilot association. While you are young and fit like me you might enjoy the 4 sector days but I think coupled to the very long 11.55 duty days (Cynical, the limit is 12 hrs) your body might not last until retirement. Constant turnover of people, no comradship with so many nationalites. There must be 15 different flavours of contracts, no published scales. Keep everyone guessing and split everyone up into selfish little groups.

Apart from that it's fine though........ :rolleyes:

Carmoisine nice post, summed it up nicely.

FOK.....generally you'll need two good sim checks, one could be your initial and then the following recurrent six months later. They are also looking for one season of winter operations and I think 500 hours flying FR aircraft.

But like everything here, nothing is in writing. So if you have a bad day in your second sim, or the examiner is on a power trip it will take you another 2 consecutive sims to be put forward for upgrade.

And after all that you'll probably be offered a basic salary of €56,000.

Best of luck with your assessment, if you take the plunge.

Carmosine, thats one of the most balanced Ryanair posts I've seen. good job

I hope all of those running "Ryanair clone airlines" in the U.S. are paying close attention to this.

Skybus is paying CA's $85k USD (roughly 42k GBP?).

Good luck getting the pay bumped at Ryanair! TC

Where on earth does this figure of €56,000 for a Ryanair captain come from?

I know a lad (from the local flying club) who is earning €75,000 a year gross as a Ryanair F/O.

On a previous Ryanair forum, a TRE admitted to earning €160,000 (£108,000).

Visual Calls,

That is a very disrespectful post to me, I fly for RYR and I am not a simpleton at the wheel who nearly crashes.

The problems you are hinting at in your short-sighted post are wider reaching than the relationship between the 1500 pilots and the Ryanair board of directors.

I would love to know more about this money invested in Ryanair pilots by Ialpa/Balpa you talk of.

Come on. G*t.

A quick perusal of the IALPA accounts will reveal how much money IALPA have invested in the Ryanair pilots. I believe BALPA have also invested much. The amount invested is not covered by Ryanair members subscriptions.

I stand by my assertion that only an idiot would accept €56k for a jet command.

Make no mistake, Ryanair pilots are at the vanguard of the reduction in T&C's. Ryanair drives the standards of T&C's in Europe. Everybody suffers but it's up to the Ryanair pilots to stop the rot. It's in your power and yours only. The only people who seem unaware of this are the Ryanair pilots themselves. Everyone else is watching you, time to wake up and show some backbone.

Is it true that you underpaid Ryan pilots also have to pay for in-flight coffee/tea? :ouch:

Yes, coffee, tea and bring your own plastic bottle to fill up with water from a tap in the crewroom (I kid you not, I work for RYR !).
Oh, and uniform, medicals, car parking, transport and hotel costs for simulator, id pass, pension plus a few other things I have probably forgotten about.

Visual Calls It's very difficult to collectively show some backbone when the pilot workforce consists of so many small incohesive groups. The old adage of "divide and rule" has been exploited very successfully by the Ryanair management .....

Don't get me wrong RYR have a lot to answer for but there are many companies doing exactly the same.

I would like to know how much money Ialpa/Balpa have invested in RYR Pilots and where?

I am an incredibly grateful member of REPA, but I believe that union recognition has no chance of propogation - we all know why.

E56k for a command? I have no idea. I thought it was £56k (in the UK)

Water would be nice especially considering the new security measures invoked - I had my peach yoghurt taken from me the other day....

Visual calls - going back to earlier post describing me et al as simpletons I could name half a dozen airlines that have had serious incidents within the last month. Who do you work for?

For the record I dont drink the water from the aircraft boilers - it makes my stomach hurt.

I can confirm that the new contract is for €58,500. I have seen the contract of one who has been forced onto it. Important distinction, no one accepts anything in this airline.

New Captains are on 90% salary for 12 months (Another deal that was forced through under suspect circumstances in places) This equals €52.650 annually. I would also state that the "Pay deal" only stated 90% of Captains salary, but those Salarys aren't published or available to anyone to see.

It has gotten to the point where it's hardly worth staying. As an experienced F/O I have my C.V out with a wide range of operators.

Even worse....€52 and a half................
This is when things are good.
You also have the option of taking a contract position and screw your fellow workers.
Only good if you don't pay your tax...................

Forced how? Someone hold a gun to his head and tell him he will be a captain?
You don't want to work for appalling money, you don't go for command. Simple.
If everyone says no, you'll get a proper salary.
And forget the sanctimonious divide and conquer crap, that only works because you allow it. Some of you I have no doubt are well intentioned, but regrettably most Ryanair pilots are responsible for allowing the divide and conquer to happen. The will to stand together is all that's required.
Take responsibility for the mess you're creating, the sooner you learn to do so, the sooner you will stop shafting everyone else.

Visual Calls, My initial reaction to reading your post is, in the words of our hallowed leader to the EU, Foxtrot Oscar. However, I am going to educate you instead.

Believe me, if Ryanair could literally hold a gun to peoples head I don't think they would rule it out as a tactic. When I use the word forced I want you to close your eyes and concentrate for a moment. Seriously: just play along for a moment. I want you to associate the word with blackmail, coercion, trickery.

I want you to imagine the 200 Hr cadet with €100,000 in debts. He passes his interview and is told he is being taken on the basis of a permanent employee, is told that a job awaits him at the other side of his type rating. Type Rating, Circuits, and two months of line training is finished. He gets an interview to sign his contract of employement (Yes, the first one even after all that) where he is told, that "we" are sorry but the only positions we have are as BrooKfield Contractors. Take it or leave it.

Now you may be a wealthy person Visual Calls but at that point with €130,000 committed, Ryanair have these Cadets over a barrel. The fact is that Cadets will sell their soul four a job, a few might not, but they are the exception. What they do is dishonest.

Another scenario. Command upgrade candidate. Passes through all the hoops. Goes for same interview as above. It's announced to him that the Captain salary at his base has now been lowered, to say, €52K. Candidate has a wife, two kids and a dog and cat based at a far flung base in Europe, settled in with a house.

If either of them refuse, out they go on the street and Ryanair wheels in another Brazilian on a Visa and an IAA validated conversion of their licence, or another low houred cadet.

I'm not asking for your sympathy, but these are the realities that we face here. I am an active IALPA member and have been trying with all the energy I have to get people to get involved in REPA. However, when you get a mix of nationalities, bases, permanent and contract, it is nigh on impossible to get people to act in a unified manner. Which enables Ryanair to continually erode our pay at what I estimate to be 10%-15% a year.

" ......and forget the sanctimonious divide and conquer crap, that only works because you allow it. Some of you I have no doubt are well intentioned, but regrettably most Ryanair pilots are responsible for allowing the divide and conquer to happen.

Tell that to the long queue of young eager SSTR cadets waiting to beat a path to Ryanair's door, and take a seat in a shiny new 737-800. Just take a look at other threads on this forum to see what I mean .......

PS Carmoisine has put it very succinctly !

First, congrats to Carmoisine for (a) getting is so right, and (b) taking the trouble to spell out to those who will not listen what they should take very seriously. Those seem to include JW411 who knows "a lad (from the local flying club) who is earning €75,000 a year gross as a Ryanair F/O". Great news for the lad from the local flying club, but not a good guide to life in Ryanair.

While it could well be true JW411 it does not mean that the latest basic for a Ryanair captain is not €58,600 (the correct figure according to REPA which talks of referring actual documents). Of course that is the "basic" - but the year one figure is 90% of that - yes it is even less! Maybe that answers your question "Where on earth does this figure of €56,000 for a Ryanair captain come from?".

As for "On a previous Ryanair forum, a TRE admitted to earning €160,000 (£108,000)" ... well even if true it is so far from the reality for most FR pilots that it serves its purpose to have it quoted here from time to time. You seem willing to believe it it is real reflection of life in Ryanair, so it served its purpose for you!

The problem JW411 is that there are so many contracts, so many fudges and angles and pilots willing to do different deals that you never know anything in Ryanair with certainty. Well, apart from one thing, that is: each year the average pilot pay goes down. The rate of decline is determined by the number of pilots willing to allow themselves to be entrapped in circumstances in which they feel they have to say yes.

But, increasingly, people have little sympathy for the lot of them as they create their own mess. It is the spread of the disease to other other airlines that is the real problem.

This is the reality...well said ATSE...RYR management are the most cunning of the lot of them - like someone else said, united we stand, divided we fall. Create a web of deceit and confusion regarding pay scales in each base in isolation and you'll be changing your name to MOL before you know it...

As for 200hr SSTR guys and other operators following suit...monkey see, monkey do...and there's a lot of monkeys out there it seems!

Why don't RYR pilots emmigrate to other airlines?? Is there a contract trick whereby pilots can't leave??

Shouldn't the growth in aviation industry improve T&Cs?? I remember from 2001 to 2004, it was sooo hard to get a pilot job, that it was somehow understandable that T&C were getting worse and many airlines were firing pilots or cutting wages... But nowdays things are better, there are new airlines, more airplanes, etc... How come conditions continue to get worse with time... I thing that now we are in advantage, we are needed for the airlines to grow, and we must apply some pressure...

What I don't get is why young pilots insist on paying for getting a job (Type rating and all) and accept being treated so badly... I know it's a nice job, but come on, ITS A JOB, we are soupossed to get paid for it and not the opossite...

Funny you should mention that! Here is an example that has happened in FR:

Imagine getting a job elsewhere. Your hand your notice in. You were bonded for a type rating when you joined as a Direct entry Captain. You served the bond time, though and you give the required three months notice. Long story short, Ryanair says there is a typing error in your contract and the bond was for a longer period then you thought. We are taking your last two months salary, we want the balance of the bond money, our legal fees, and because you are leaving before the end of the bond we have to hire a contractor to cover your flights and the minimum period we can hire him for is 6 months, so you have to pay us his salary for that period too. And our legal fees (As it usually gets to that stage when it goes that far). Most non Union protected Pilots have to cough up the cash for the sake of a quiet life.

You serious? Is that true? That's fraud. I can't see that standing up in court.

I work for a quite large UK airline. I'm not aware of any pilots joining from Ryanair, ever. Is my boss frightened of upsetting MOL by taking his pilots?

Get that in writing before they wise up!

Unless you've signed a new contract with typos corrected, you'll win any claim for compensation. Nice little (or big) leaving bonus! :)

Of course, the best trick in the first place is to get the milkman, or the dog, or the neighbours five year old to sign the bond. None of my bonds have ever had my signature on them. :cool:

I sincerely hope you can back that up because if its true then it's fraud (or theft, or deception) but it's definately very illegal, and the police should be taking notice.
If its not true then you've just exposed yourself to a libel suit!

Ex Copper by any chance?

who me? not on your nelly. Generally don't have time for the police.
However the practice that carmosine has alluded to, if true, is not legal and should be investigated.

Although it might sound strange, there are large numbers of FR pilots who stay because they are quite simply well inside their comfort zone and just can't be asked to put up with the upheaval of moving.

I left them nine years ago but regularly bump into guys I flew with; despite the fact that they whinge and moan about how awful it is, none of them have seriously considered leaving, either because they believe they will take a drop in salary or because it will involve a change of base.

ZeBedie's observations apply here - until this year we haven't hired one single FR pilot at my base, and only a small handful throughout the rest of our network.