Noe wrote:
Corporate behaviour is something that can be debated, but in terms of security and comfort, I think for short haul, every company is the same. My deciding factors end up usually being just schedule and airport (LHR / Luton for instance are usually no gos for me since commute is way too annoying)
The business models are obviously different (compare a canceled Lufthansa flight and watch how they manage the problem/rebook you etc.. with being stranded by a low cost company). My booking behavior is similar, schedule and then price. I do prefer clean airplanes and insist on confident crews (not someone who comes to work sick because they are pushed). With that in mind, I do not fly Ryanair.
Snoopy wrote:
compare a canceled Lufthansa flight and watch how they manage the problem/rebook you etc.. with being stranded by a low cost company
Fortunately, I don’t have a good enough sample size. But I got stranded once with Easyjet (in Lyon, on a 30th of Dec, partly due to fog), and honestly I really can’t complain how they dealt with it: I asked for the flight to be changed to Manchester (because I didn’t want to arrive late on a 31st of Dec when I was hosting 50 people), and they paid for everything I filed, no questions and reimbursed in less than a week:
- The nicer hotel of the airport, right in front of the terminal (130 euros)
- A nice meal (50 euros)
- The train from manchester to london (80 pounds)
Easyjet cancelled a flight (a whole series of them) for us from Venice in May and washed their hands of it. We managed to get a midnight one back on BA. I still have the paperwork on my desk to file the claim; it is quite a lot of money which one can get back.
Back to Ryanair maintenance, it would be fun to find out how exactly they managed to make such a mistake in their paperwork. From what I hear from someone who works on these, the job is really paperwork-heavy. One can also see the country’s own CAA to let them get away with it, whereas a private pilot would have been busted and quite possibly prosecuted. One tends to not readily bust organisations which pay you lots of €€€ / £££ in licensing fees, because a defence lawyer can expose holes in the licensing organisation 
Ryanair have a reputation, but from the point of view of the pilots, the airline is actually extraordinarily good. The pilot crew training is some of the best in the industry and they are all, without exception, treated very well (at least from the view point of the actually flying). All the dubious Irish self employed contracts are also being used less. Cabin crew and the customer care generally is a different matter.
Ryanair have a reputation, but from the point of view of the pilots, the airline is actually extraordinarily good.
I have never met anybody working there who honestly/privately claimed what you say about ryanair. I’m sure there are exceptions, but the rule is the opposite. To put it bluntly: you are treated like shit. I’m not saying one can’t make it work personally but
„Extraordinarily“ good – maybe at KLM, Lufthansa or some foreign legacy carriers. Certainly not Ryanair.
Snoopy – interesting, and I appreciate it is difficult to form a balanced view. I have business dealings with four Ryanair pilots so it is a very small sample, but each (and they dont know each other) holds this opinion, and another pilot from one of the flag ship airlines commented how impressed he was by their training standards and the way they look after their pilots. Perhaps I have just seen one side of this.
I have had business dealings with hundreds of Ryanair pilots and without exception they all said it was great company if you were flying.
A few years ago they were truly dreadful in the Customer Care department, however of late they have improved markedly. In fact, better than their rival Easyjet, who with the demise of Carolyn McCall have truly gone to the dogs in the Customer Service department . I also know a few of the RYR pilots who swear that they are wonderful to fly for. An Easyjet Captain I know hates EY. He is Ex BMI..(737) Punishing and unfair bid process for routes. He was so knackered that he took himself off roster and on sick.
It may have changed but he was not a happy bunny.
The thing I could never understand with the management at RYR was why not do the whole thing ’’nicely’’. They always had a hard nasty edge to everything they did. Better now……..perhaps someone woke up
Very interesting. My take is it is dependent on base and contract. There are a few thousand ryr pilots, so my sample size is tiny.
The austrian subsidiary has been in the news quite often during the last few weeks. Apparently management pilots stepped down due to “issues” and were immediately fired. Some cabin crew fired because they had too many sick days. Not good.
