RYANAIR: Cheap seats, cheaper morals!
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I flew Ryanair this morning. I haven’t flown on Ryanair for about five years. I don’t avoid them out of snobbery, but more out of a moral obligation, both to myself and to the rest of the pilot community. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy the stampede for a seat, the constant adverts throughout a 0620am flight (seriously, who wants luke warm chicken tikka masala or chicken nuggets at 6 in the morning?!), and I definitely don’t enjoy being charged £50 at the gate to check in my flight deck bag (a bag that I take with me on a tiny ERJ-145 every single day). No, I don’t enjoy that at all. However, my hatred for Ryanair runs much deeper.
Ryanair started out well enough, a small regional airline flying from Ireland to the UK. The only problem was, it didn’t work. By the early 1990s the company was on the verge of going out of business. An ageing fleet and a lack of direction meant the airline was fast heading into bankruptcy. Then along came Michael O’Leary. Love him or hate him, you have to admit the man is a phenomenal business man. Within a few years he had turned the airline into the biggest low cost airline in Europe. Fares plummeted, the route network expanded and the future looked bright. Then came the charges…
Yes, I can almost forgive charging to check in a bag, United does this, hell, even BA does it out of Gatwick on some fares now. Charging for food and drink seems reasonable I suppose. Heck, I can even forgive charging to select your seat. That’s your seat. The passenger’s seat. But Mr O’Leary in his infinite wisdom didn’t stop there. What about the flight deck seats? Surely no one could sell those? No? Well, think again. Ryanair CHARGES it’s pilots to join the company. It costs around £350 for the ‘assessment’, quickly followed by a hefty charge of £27,500 for the 737 type rating (a rating, which in reality only costs £15,000-17,000. A nice little earner for Mr O’Leary). During the type rating and line training the new pilot goes unpaid and then finally, when they hit the line they start earning an hourly wage of around £40. In layman’s terms this sounds very generous, however, that’s not per duty hour, but per flight hour. There is no minimum guaranteed number of flight hours per month. I know of Ryanair pilots who have not flown in two months. £40 an hour is very handsome when you’re flying 100 hours a month, but when you only fly 30-40 hours over the winter months, it suddenly gets very hard to pay the bills (including that nice big loan you just took out to pay Mr O’Leary £27.5k).
As if all of this wasn’t insulting enough, you’re not even employed by Ryanair. The airline insists that you set up your own limited company and you can only use their accountants to do so. Out of your £40 an hour, you have to deduct your own taxes, social security/national insurance and accountant fees. Oh, and you can take another £5 an hour off for your mandatory six monthly recurrent sim training, so by now, in reality you’re down to about £21 an hour. Now, as you’re not employed by Ryanair, but actually self employed, you need to pay for your airport parking pass (about £60 a month), your uniform (about £350), your loss of licence insurance, your annual medical and any drinks, snacks and food at work. You can probably deduct about £5,000 a year for all of that.
Don’t plan on being based at home either. Although Ryanair offers one of the best roster patterns in the industry (day trips with no night stops, 5 days on 4 days off, or 5 days on 3 days off, depending on your base), it’s highly unlikely that you will be based anywhere near your home, or requested base. Instead you will be sent across Europe. As Ryanair don’t do nightstops, you’ll have to find your own accommodation in base. Some pay for cheap hotels, some rent rooms, some even live in their cars. On a 5 on 3 off roster you can plan on being home for one full day every 8 days, with the first and last day off being used for commuting to your base. Still tempted to join?
On top of all this you can forget sick pay, holiday pay or compassionate leave. If you need time off it comes out of your own pocket. The company also insists that all pilots take at least one month off unpaid per year. As you increase in seniority and your pay goes up, you will see a noticeable drop in your hours and thus your pay as you stop flying to make way for the newer, cheaper, shiny eyed cadets.
The only positives I can fathom are the fact that you will fly some of the newest equipment in Europe (when you actually fly), the training offered is actually of a very high standard and the hours that you do get will be valuable to helping you move on to the likes of Emirates, who seem to love ex-Ryanair pilots. On the downside you’ll be destroying the industry even further for future generations and you’ll be displaying an overwhelming lack of respect for both yourself and your fellow pilots who are working to make the industry a better place.
As we started our descent on my first Ryanair flight in five years I reflected on the experience. The cabin crew, bless them, were very hard working and were very pleasant to deal with. The flight was smooth, on time and got me to where I needed to go. But the cattle truck mentality, the lack of any moral fibre and the obvious distain by Ryanair’s management team for both passengers and staff alike means that I will not be using Ryanair again in the near future unless I have no other options. They weren’t even that cheap, but they were the only airline going anywhere near the small French town that was my final destination. Next time I’ll fly with BA or Air France and just rent a car. Maybe it won’t cost as much for my crew bag to fly on the aircraft as it did for me in my seat!
