If anyone continues to fly Ryanair after this fiasco then they need their head examining.

Spanish aviation authorities have open an investigation/case file regarding the cancellations and the way the company will handle passenger's rights:

[ES] http://www.expansion.com/empresas/trans ... b4639.html

andymartin wrote:

If anyone continues to fly Ryanair after this fiasco then they need their head examining.

There are plenty of people who have no other option (and that is also why Ryanair success)

MOL live conference in this link now :

https://www.thesun.ie/travel/1551544/ry ... re-a-mess/

andymartin wrote:

If anyone continues to fly Ryanair after this fiasco then they need their head examining.

They are thinking with their head, the frugal part that is. Unfortunately, with Ryanair it may be a bigger gamble than with some other LCC airlines.

lightsaber wrote:

There is no credit for shooting themselves in the foot. FR is expanding. They should have hired for the problem. What is the point of a high aircraft utilization strategy if you suddenly decide to park a dozen or so airframes? (corrected typo part to park)

Lack of pilots is only the fault of the airline. Late edit: Why didn't they hire more? Its been obviously for a while to see the trends of pilots leaving...

I find it hard to believe the quantity of pilots who have left FR isn't impacting operations. The solution is pay and a little respect.

Norwegians response to MOL:. (I find it telling 1/3rd of Norwegians hires come from Ryanair, 140 so far this year):
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/norwe ... -us-2017-9

I found on a competing site to this one that FR has lost about 10% of its pilots quickly due to other European low cost airlines accelerating hiring in 'months.' (I don't know if that is 3 or 11 months.)

LCCs are expanding in Europe and India. Pilots willing to travel will find offers. Cest la vie.

But overall, this is just poor planning by FR. If I was a co-pilot at FR, I'd certainly jump ship as everything I've read about their salaries wouldn't pay for the debt to become a pilot.

Lightsaber

Yepp, interesting is the drainage of experienced guys. Without TRE/TRI no line pilots

To be fair, I have been Platinum on American for 10 years or so and therefore I prefer to fly BA whenever possible from the UK, but I have been on about 30 or so Ryanair flights and never had a problem. They have a decent on time record, fly to interesting places and only charge you £50 return to do it. They let you take a decent amount of carry on, far more than the likes of Thomas Cook and you know what you are getting.

Last weekend I went on the beer in Nuremberg Germany. I paid £38 return. I have rebooked again for October as it is cheaper than a taxi into town and back. I flew MAN-LPA for £39 earlier in the year and my Barcelona coming up was only about £40. I actually like them.

They have cancelled my MAN-KBP for November so have rebooked on BA.

I live close to ORY and can get to CDG easily, while BVA is inconvenient, so I have never flown Ryanair so far, no need.

However they do offer some exclusive routes that have no competition and thus people must take them or take a more expensive and longer one stop flight.

Aesma wrote:

I live close to ORY and can get to CDG easily, while BVA is inconvenient, so I have never flown Ryanair so far, no need.

However they do offer some exclusive routes that have no competition and thus people must take them or take a more expensive and longer one stop flight.

France is the most Ryanair-unfriendly among the big countries in Europe (UK, Spain, Italy, Poland, Germany).

Also as you say BVA is very inconvenient and a lot of Parisians (I have lived there) have still a "snobbish" attitude against Ryanair which in 2017 most people in the rest of Europe do not have anymore. I think also from my experience Paris must be the worst big city in Europe to get good "weekend / city break fares" if you compare it to London, Milan, Brussels or other cities with multiple, competitive airports.

I suspect the biggest airports for French users for Ryanair must be across the border. Charleroi which is heavily used by people from Lille (sometimes flying out of CRL you only hear French accent - very easy to distinguish from Wallon/Belgian accent - just look at the number of Southern France routes they have out of CRL -) and to a lesser extent Karlsruhe and Hahn for Strasbourg/Alsace and Girona for Perpignan.

downtown273 wrote:

Has Ryanair tried anything like this (to "buy" the holiday entitlement)?

The legal minimum vacation days, at least 4 weeks and more in many EU countries, is not an entitlement, but a requirement. If your staff is involved in a lethal exident and hasn't had its required time off during the last year, superiors go to jail for manslaughter, and they procecute as far up the chain as they can.
This is why larger companies keep vacation and labor time limits to the letter. I was once stricken from next days schedule, as a checking and boarding agent, because after a delayed departure my next shift would have started one minute short of the required 11 hours off time.

Best regards
Thomas

If only Norwegian and Easy could offer 'fill in" flights for these routes as a publicity stunt/goodwill gesture.

In todays press conference MOL has said he has approached pilots to buy back their leave and also if they don't get enough of those who have been allocated 4 weeks in a block they will cancel some leave. I guess they will still be allowed their leave but it will be at a later date. I can see this going down well with the pilots . He also kept on with his Norwegian going bust in 12 months remarks !

OA260 wrote:

In todays press conference MOL has said he has approached pilots to buy back their leave and also if they don't get enough of those who have been allocated 4 weeks in a block they will cancel some leave. I guess they will still be allowed their leave but it will be at a later date. I can see this going down well with the pilots . He also kept on with his Norwegian going bust in 12 months remarks !

If the reports of the pilot poaching are true, of course he would.

The full list is here:
http://fr-prod-static-pdf.s3-website-eu ... ations.pdf

Its a pilot shortage but what about the engineering shortage? In the next 5 years 90% of British engineers are retiring.

goosebayguy wrote:

Its a pilot shortage but what about the engineering shortage? In the next 5 years 90% of British engineers are retiring.

That's much less of a problem, engineering can easily be outsourced. There's always somebody willing to do the engineering for Ryanair.

OA260 wrote:

He also kept on with his Norwegian going bust in 12 months remarks !

So it's 12 months now ...Wasn't it 4-5 months last week ?

Another amusing take on Ryanair's situation...

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/busi ... 0918135950

My October flight got cancelled.
I now have to pay thrice as much and connect with LH in MUC if I want to get decent schedules.
Many thanks to the useless amateurs in Dublin.

MOL is not the same anymore since he decided to offer himself that shiny new HQ. They're migrating away from their great business model of a well-organised, true LCC, towards a U2 kind of business model.

This was stupid and it doesn't look promising for the future.
It's time for MOL to retire.

My October flight got cancelled. Buying same terminal, same destination with EI, 10e more expensive with an hour of difference. Not the end of the world indeed. Happy they finally targeted airports and flights with multiple options to avoid having passengers stuck for days without alternatives.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

OzarkD9S wrote:

No pilot shortage if they buy AZ.

However the problem is that all of those pilots first have to apply for their 737 type rating (alitalia doesn't fly the 737 so none of them have the 737 type rating) so they're not available on short term.

The pilot shortage at Ryanair is a short term problem, they need pilots now.

Also this is overly optimistic about the union situation at AZ.
AZ crew went on strike for a lot less. Can you imagine what could happen if FR came in asking for pay cuts or mandatory rebasements?

LTenEleven wrote:

The full list is here:
http://fr-prod-static-pdf.s3-website-eu ... ations.pdf

This is extremely clever on their part. Customers who have been warned about their cancellation at least 2 weeks in advance are not able to file EU261 claims.

Aesma wrote:

That explanation doesn't make sense. What they're saying is that they're forcing people to take vacations before the end of the year instead of before April next year. Why ? They could have a transition period where you have vacation days transferred to the next calendar. In fact if they were really doing what they're saying, they would be giving more vacations to people. I have a lot of trouble believing Ryanair would do that, instead of just having a transition period.

According to this article, the Irish Aviation Authority is forcing the change onto FR. Thus, they suddenly must cram all the vacation in before December 31, whereas they were expecting to have until the end of March 2018. Of course, what isn't mentioned, and I don't know either, is how long FR has known about this issue.

http://globalnews.ca/news/3752204/ryana ... -shortage/

While it currently calculates crew leave from April to March, the Irish Aviation Authority is forcing it to calculate it from January to December from the start of 2018, it added.

interesting text from IALPA about Ryanair
https://ialpa.net/ialpa-analysis-of-rya ... rs-crisis/

New joiners 2017: 634 (mainly FO's)
Leavers 2017 : 718
New frames 2016 -17 : 100

So 1700 pilots short ....

Ryanair offers €12,000 bonus to pilots who give up leave

Ryanair has offered to pay bonuses of up to €12,000 to pilots who agree to give up annual leave entitlements to plug gaps in the schedule which have triggered flight cancellations over the next six weeks.

However, the pilots would not receive the bonuses until October of next year.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2017/0 ... or-pilots/

This deal would involve a lot more than giving up some leave.

Also iirc there are also legal/regulatory limits on flying hours.

Big PR disaster. Shythe being shouted at FR on all newspapers and online news outlets today.

I actually like FR, mainly because they offer an amazing array of (otherwise unserved - totally) destinations from a very nearby airport, and so far -having flown them hundreds of time- they have proved to be reliable, on-time and offering a decent experience at solidly cheap fares. But this is I agree a total balls up disaster.

I also think MOL should go. He is bad for the company. He is no longer funny, and his outrageous remarks are simply rubbing people on the wrong side. It's about time the old man stops blabbering silliness and retires out in the lush green Irish countryside for good.

Further crisis looms for Ryanair as pilots threaten strike action

Passengers flying Ryanair face the possibility of further disruption, with pilots threatening to go on strike at the airline in a move that could result in additional flight cancellations.
Three meetings attended by over 120 pilots at Ryanair took place in Dublin yesterday during which a ballot for industrial action was discussed, the Irish Independent reports.

Pilots in Ireland as well as their colleagues across Europe are expected to meet over the next two days to consider taking a "collective" approach.

Sources have told the Irish Independent that action which might be taken includes industrial action or alternatively staff might call in sick, in a move which could result in chaos for passengers across the continent.

It has also emerged that the airline has started to scour Brazil in a move to find pilots as it tries to maintain its flight schedule.

http://www.independent.ie/business/iris ... 46679.html

I am off to Malta with them on Thursday.

When I went online to check in, there was a problem.

Every time I go to the pay now button it would not work.

Tried Livechat who could not help.

Eventually it went through on Explorer despite them saying it must be done on Google Chrome.

Seems there was some issue at their end.

May be best to check in ASAP, rather than at the last minute.

OA260 wrote:

Ryanair offers €12,000 bonus to pilots who give up leave

Ryanair has offered to pay bonuses of up to €12,000 to pilots who agree to give up annual leave entitlements to plug gaps in the schedule which have triggered flight cancellations over the next six weeks.

However, the pilots would not receive the bonuses until October of next year.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2017/0 ... or-pilots/

Bank it tomorrow, then I'll come to work.

Hi just saw this from an ex BALPA chairman.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/europes- ... -mcauslan/

There is no doubt that Ryanair has improved its passenger experience, but all that good work has just been jettisoned because it do not mirror it with an improved employee experience.

A typical Michael O’Leary quote:

"MBA students come out with: 'My staff is my most important asset.' Bullshit. Staff is usually your biggest cost.”

He does love his quip. As does the Ryanair Chairman, David Bonderman, who has held that position for a reality-defying 21 years. Of course Mr Bonderman learned this summer that quips can cost you as he had to stand down from the Board of that other arch-disrupter ‘Uber’ when he said more women on the board just meant more talking.

So as Mr O’Leary and Mr Bonderman prepare the Ryanair flight deck for the next Board meeting, what do we hope their attitude might be? Humility? Self examination? Questioning whether having two such similar characters on the flight deck is safe? Asking themselves why they did not put as much effort into improving the employment model as they successfully did into improving the passenger experience?

Might we even hope that other Board members will be tough enough to ask searching questions of themselves as to why the company got into this mess when they were meant to be navigating?

Because the car crash now playing out in the media and twitter feeds has been sometime coming, but the seeds have always been there if the Board had looked.

One of the company’s responses to the debacle has been to offer to buy back staff leave - and no doubt many will take that option because that is the lived reality of the Ryanair employment model “we buy your labour when we want it”.

This thread has run through the employment model to the extent that the majority of pilots are set up as employees of their own small limited company and scores of these companies in turn supply pilot services to an agency that then leases those pilots to Ryanair. Few I speak to outside aviation can believe it and the tax authorities are still trying to get their minds round it. And why this structure? Yes there is a financial saving, but the big reason is that it outsources risk from Ryanair to the pilot so that when there is either a seasonal or industry downturn the tap of labour can be switched off without penalty. Well, not quite!

A second thread is Ryanair’s very close relationship with Ireland’s aviation regulator. EU Flight Time Limitation rules set a mandatory limit of 900 flight hours per calendar year to prevent cumulative fatigue. This limit has applied for 9 years and all EU Member States have used January to December as the ‘year’, except Ireland who chose 1 April to 31 March. This interpretation happened to be very convenient for any summer-intensive airline regulated by Ireland. The Irish joined the EU-wide consensus this year - enough said.

And then there is the labour market for pilots. Over recent years there has been a glut so if Mr O’Leary said ‘if you don't like us you can f*** off” that is just what the pilot had to do. Well the glut has ended (for now anyway) and according to the Irish pilot union over 700 had stopped flying for Ryanair in the last financial year and had moved to airlines offering an employment contract.

Ryanair is a successful airline, but it is in a hole. My advice; less quips and open yourself to alternative perspectives.

An ex pilots take on RYR

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -long-haul

Rumour as it that a pilots strike is no longer unbelievable.

The Belgian press echoes many pilots unions stances and I really believe it's now or never if they want to pressure this AH of MOL.

The first step would be a "stick to the contract rules" strike. Payback time has now come dear MOL...

Flying Belgian wrote:

Rumour as it that a pilots strike is no longer unbelievable.

The Belgian press echoes many pilots unions stances and I really believe it's now or never if they want to pressure this AH of MOL.

The first step would be a "stick to the contract rules" strike. Payback time has now come dear MOL...

Yes indeed now is the time if they are going to strike. It would cause the maximum effect.

A work to rule will cripple Ryanair.

GBNWB wrote:

I have a FR MAN-BCN booked for the weekend. Should it be cancelled and I can't get hold of FR, I will book on Vueling. Am i entitled to the money back if I book without speaking to Ryanair first?

If so, am I entitled to 225 Euros, and the cost of the Vueling flight? I take it I wouldn't get the money back I had paid to FR for the booking with them?

If you book outside of Ryanair, it's on your own cost and you will not get a refund. If Ryanair rebooks you, they may charge you extra if there are only more expensive fare brackets available. You may safely assume, there will only be more expensive fares available.

They will only reimburse you the fare, and quite possibly withholding the taxes. Which means, on a 50 UKP ticket you might get a tenner back. If you're lucky.

Whatever you spend on other carriers to get you to where you need going, Ryanair doesn't care about. And contrary to EU rulings, they will never rebook you outside their own network.

Then again, you freely chose to book with them ...

This couldn't happen to a nicer company...

Ryanair pilots reject company's proposed bonus scheme

Ryanair pilots have rejected the company's proposed bonus scheme to encourage them to work through annual leave, and have called for improvements in their employment terms and conditions.

On Monday, Ryanair offered pilots bonuses of up to €12,000, deferred for a year, if they would give up some of their annual leave entitlements to address staff shortages which have triggered the cancellation of thousands of flights over the next six weeks.

However in a response to the airline the Employee Representative Councils, representing 17 Ryanair bases, said the majority of their colleagues had rejected the proposals.

RTÉ News has also seen other documents which raise the possibility of a work-to-rule by pilots, which would significantly worsen the current disruption to flights at the airline.

In today's memo to management, the ERCs say they wished to put forward a simpler, more constructive "counter offer" to address the airline's operational problems and create a positive future.

They say a stable future for both the company and the pilots requires changes including implementation of a regional system with permanent local contracts for all employees according to the national law and rights.

They want regional teams to operate in a coordinated manner to achieve common working conditions throughout the Ryanair network, but allowing for differences in local law such as pay scales.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2017/0920/90631 ... ir-pilots/

"Up to €12000" being the key words here. It is ryanair lingo. Like they say they fly to Frankfurt and they fly to HHN.
The reality is the actual amount won't be even close and they're not seeing a dime any time soon.

The ERCs understand FR lingo, and didn't take the bait. FR is on its way to being a leisure travel airline.

Regretting booking 2 flights on Ryanair for November now, hope it doesn't ruin my trip -_-

Premise: FR is the biggest airline in Italy.
Today ENAC (Italian Civil Aviation Authority) has urgently summoned FR because of the cancellations and the perceived misrepresentation of EU261 rights.
Also today, AGCM (Italian Competition Authority) has opened an investigation into FR, because (1) it is not disclosing properly to passengers their EU261 rights, (2) they are not diligently running a business because the cancellations where foreseeable and caused by the way FR behaved. Sadly the maximum fine should be only 5 mln euros.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ryana ... SKCN1BV2ED

You get what you pay for.

Surprised QR hasn't offered to 'step in'.

Wonder how this fiasco will impact on their plans to take a slice of AB or AZ.

To the numbers above on FR being 1700 pilots short, my math is closer to 1400. I know, a nitpick, I simply prefer accuracy.

Personally, I'm impressed they found 700 hires.

VCEflyboy wrote:

"Up to €12000" being the key words here. It is ryanair lingo. Like they say they fly to Frankfurt and they fly to HHN.
The reality is the actual amount won't be even close and they're not seeing a dime any time soon.

That is 100% true.

I wonder how much of this fiasco has driven FR pilots to apply elsewhere. If you are only an expense, no loyalty expected.

MBAs are taught employees are the greatest asset as turnover is expensive.

That fact FR laughs at EU compensation rules shows how they have no teeth unless the airline volunteers.

Lightsaber

It seems MOL thinks that bulling his employees is the best way to sort the problem out. More fun coming

Ryanair boss says he may force pilots to change holiday plans
...
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has escalated the airline’s dispute with pilots, saying they do not have a “difficult job” and claiming he can force them to give up a week of leave.
...
He added: “Once you are trained and skilled at doing it ... I would challenge any pilot to explain how this is a difficult job or how it is they are overworked or how anybody who by law can’t fly more than 18 hours a week could possibly be suffering from fatigue.”
...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... cellations

Ryanair offers pay rise to some pilots on top of bonus

Ryanair will hand pilots at some of its largest bases a €10,000 annual pay rise on top of a €12,000 bonus offered this week to those who help the airline alleviate a pilot shortage, its CEO Michael O'Leary has said.

Pilots were offered the bonus in exchange for working an additional 10 days to plug a shortage that forced Ryanair to cancel more than 2,000 flights in September and October.

Pilots at London Stansted, Dublin, Frankfurt and Berlin have now been offered an additional €10,000 a year, Michael O'Leary said.

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2017/0 ... anair-agm/

I quite like the Ryanair model but I think that MOL is not his own best friend. His opinions of pilots would be better kept to himself and calm troubled waters, these are the very people that can help him out. When you are in a hole, stop digging.

There is a catch to that bonus however. In Dutch:

https://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/nieuws/ ... n-vakantie

Biggest thing is that the bonus is being paid in november next year, but only if the pilot is still flying for Ryanair by then. Pilots who decide to leave don't get their bonus. Also you have to make at least 800 flying hours and you're not allowed to be sick for more than 4 days. You don't get to choose when you can take your days off next year, Ryanair decides that for you. And on top of that, the bonus amount is gross (taxes still have to be deducted). The net bonus (after taxes) is a lot lower.

gatibosgru wrote:

Regretting booking 2 flights on Ryanair for November now, hope it doesn't ruin my trip -_-

That's winter schedule, you should be fine!

MOL comments to the Guardian seem somewhat unhelpful.