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We know there is a surplus of airline pilots and crew now, but this is amazing (Ryanair)

Isn’t this just

  • a low paid job (but with prospects)
  • lots of money spent on training

so really same as so much other stuff?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

johnh wrote:

I ran into a former Ryanair pilot a few weeks ago – he was visiting the Aeroclub at Dax where he flew a while back. He is now very happily flying 330s and 350s for Air Caraibe. He portrayed Ryanair as a dreadful place where you have to pay for absolutely everything (€200 for a badge, iirc, for example) and where the working conditions are very tough too – four sectors per day starting before dawn. His view is that you just have to view this as a kind of apprenticeship – a bit like being an intern on your way to practising as a doctor.

I think that sums up the attraction of companies like Ryanair pretty well. That said, I have met some pilots who actually enjoyed flying for RYR. Reasons were / are pretty quick upgrade to captain, flying into small(ish) challenging airports and, as captain, making decent money, IIRC around EUR 120k p.a.

Dimme wrote:

Here, an employer asks for money from a prospective employee

Ah! They should be so lucky! If you read it carefully, you’ll see that there is no guarantee of such an employment!
It says “RyanAir or employment agency contract”.

These employment agency contracts essentially mean that you’re self employed. You form your own company (probably grouped with other pilots to share costs), contract with another company to provide pilot services, who then contracts with RyanAir!

Should RyanAir or the company in the middle no longer want your services, they just don’t give you any further work. You’re still employed by your own company, but it no longer has any income to pay you. So no employment security at all.

To me this is the scandalous part, and not the low pay or up front costs. Those are entered into with your eyes open. The the lack of commitment to providing you with work afterwards that I think it the really bad part.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Doesn’t Ireland have the equivalent of the UK IR35 HMRC attack on contractors who are “actually” employees?

OTOH, if RYA did deliver any form of job security, they would fall foul of IR35 via the principal test of whether you really are “employed”, which would force the pilots to be paid as salary instead of living mostly from dividents (and thus avoiding NICs, which increases your takehome pay by ~10%) and I would bet that the pilots prefer this lack of security.

You can’t have it both ways.

In “life” generally, one finds that hard working people, especially without a family, prefer to be “traders”, with no job security but more money, while those who are lazy, or who have a family or other commitments, tend to prefer less money and more security. So one could argue that RYA cater for the former market, while other airlines cater for the latter market.

If you google on IR35, the #1 link offered is “IR35 ryanair” which is hilarious, and indeed we have been there before so I merged the two threads See e.g. here.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Ryanair which operates a somewhat up or out philosophy, is probably still the fastest route to command with many Captains in their twenties. This phenomenon last seen on multi engine transport in WW2 or Vietnam. They then go onto long haul in the Middle East and hang up their headsets at 55.

Not really. The ME3 fired hundreds of older widebody captains last year. I know lots of them. Had to pack up their life within 30 days and leave. Some work supermarket jobs now to be insured in their previous „home“ countries.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Bizjets are a more rewarding career from what I hear, but you do need to be a good pilot to get in there

I don’t want to spoil the party but the reality is most smaller biz jet jobs are crap and are done by those that never got an airline spot. Not judging about pilot skills solely here.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Peter wrote:

500hrs on any multi pilot plane would be more like 2M+, not 50k, unless you get a RHS job. Only the likes of John Travolta could fund their own 500hr “ATPL unfreezing” and that’s if you do it on a sim.

It’s called pay2fly and it’s about 30k-50k to „work“ a year and get 300-500h.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Should RyanAir or the company in the middle no longer want your services, they just don’t give you any further work. You’re still employed by your own company, but it no longer has any income to pay you. So no employment security at all. To me this is the scandalous part, and not the low pay or up front costs. Those are entered into with your eyes open. The the lack of commitment to providing you with work afterwards that I think it the really bad part

Exactly. People fly sick all the time. Afraid to „not be needed anymore“.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Peter wrote:

Doesn’t Ireland have the equivalent of the UK IR35 HMRC attack on contractors who are “actually” employees?

I understand IR35 is about trying to distinguish true self employment from bogus self employment. Is that correct?

Yes, we have something similar but it’s enforcement in recent years has been somewhat lacking in my opinion.
But you’re assuming that those people would be employed in Ireland. That’s not necessarily the case at all. Those who are employees, are often employed in other countries where they are based.

But in the case of the contractors, RyanAir have been somewhat ‘clever’. The employees are grouped into companies, and told it’s to save costs. But one very important benefit is that it makes these companies look more like a genuine employment agency, with no one person owning a controlling interest. Then there is another third party contractor between the pilots’ company and RyanAir. So if it was ever decided by the tax authorities that this was a bogus employment, it’s the contractor in the middle who they would be deemed employee’s of, and not RyanAir. The way it’s set up would be hard to get around by the tax authorities, in my opinion.

Peter wrote:

which would force the pilots to be paid as salary instead of living mostly from dividents (and thus avoiding NICs, which increases your takehome pay by ~10%) and I would bet that the pilots prefer this lack of security.

That’s very country specific. There is generally no tax benefit (and some disadvantages) to paying dividends to you from your own company in Ireland. So nobody does it outside very large companies where the directors don’t actually own the company (or certain other specific, approved tax schemes). Proprietary directors don’t pay employer PRSI in Ireland (our version of NI).

Peter wrote:

In “life” generally, one finds that hard working people, especially without a family, prefer to be “traders”, with no job security but more money, while those who are lazy, or who have a family or other commitments, tend to prefer less money and more security. So one could argue that RYA cater for the former market, while other airlines cater for the latter market.

Honestly, I think that’s unfair. You’re projecting your own position onto these people. What you say is probably true for genuine self employed persons and business owners. But in those cases they have a business, and are free to tell an awkward customer that they don’t want to deal with them, or price in the awkwardness. They are fee to take or turn down work. But that’s not really the same for these RyanAir pilots who’s position is much more like a regular employee. They don’t negotiate their pay, their work hours their conditions and they can’t tell their customer that they don’t want to deal with them anymore. Their position is a take it or leave it position.

Now if they did work for RyanAir, and Lufthansa, and Air France and BA and America, and change day by day depending on who needed them, and they agreed their price based on the demand for their services and the quality of their work and skills needed, and the hassle and expense of getting to where they were needed, then that would be more like a genuine ‘trader’ and I’d agree with you. But these pilots work for RyanAir only, on RyanAir’s terms and the only say that have in it is “Do you want to keep working, or leave?”. I was going to say that they have the same ‘power’ as an employee, but in fact they don’t. They have even less. They aren’t real ‘traders’. They are employees in all but name and rights.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

I understand IR35 is about trying to distinguish true self employment from bogus self employment. Is that correct?

Yes.

There are multiple defences to an HMRC attack; basically the “employee” must have no assurance of employment, needs to use their own “tools” (if applicable) etc.

Honestly, I think that’s unfair. You’re projecting your own position onto these people.

I knew it would look like that but (a) it was a comment on human nature and (b) “half the country” here is doing this and they must be doing it for a reason; in nearly all cases of their choosing. Even the BBC Chairman was at one point working for the BBC via a Ltd Company, with his wife doing admin duties For decades, most freelance programmers system analysts / software artisans have been doing this. It was insisted on for my first ever post-univ job, too, 1978, which I didn’t get because the interviewer thought I was a KGB mole (it was a firm called MEL, doing torpedo development and such like, and almost their entire workforce was “contractors”).

If Irish employees of RYA don’t save money by doing this, perhaps it is just the company insisting on it, which they are entitled to do… unfortunately. However I find this hard to believe; they should be able to claim stuff like expenses for clothes, travel, etc.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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