Dear Mr. Hickey,

We appreciate Ryanair’s late bonus payment offer. However, we fear it is too little too late. The offer comes with convoluted requirements which make the bonus difficult to trigger and worth very little for the disruption you are bringing to our rosters, off days and families.

In a decade of record growth and record profits our conditions have only decreased. While our pay failed to keep up with inflation we have also suffered with a lack of transparency and flexibility around leave and the location of our work. We have had our bases changed at a whim much to the detriment of countless pilot’s personal lives. We have had little operational support from Ryanair with phones often going unanswered, we even have to organise and book our own HOTAC when operating in other bases at your request, something we seem to do very often now. It is like there is nobody in the office. The result is many of our colleagues have left the business. Others colleagues are leaving with many already sat in the hold pools of our competitors.

Our requests:

1) We request that Ryanair stop blaming pilots in the media for our current issues. Pilot leave cannot continue to be blamed; as professional airline pilots we have done everything to keep the operation going including committing to work our max legal hours. We have accepted phone calls at 4am on off days, we have worked off days, we have flown last minute flights to rescue aircraft and customers and we have done all this without much complaint. Responsibility for these problems sit firmly on the desk of our CEO

2) We want to be part of a successful airline but we believe senior management have not maintained the operational and human resource support structures required. We are now 400 aircraft not 100 and serious investment in maintaining some experience in support staff and their IT systems are required.

3) We request a review of corporate culture at the highest board and senior management levels in Ryanair. We are concerned that management actions now threaten significant brand and reputational damage to the business. Michael O’Leary has already acknowledged forward bookings may suffer.

4) We request that Ryanair request their shareholders examine the value of appointing some individuals from external sources not connected with Ryanair to Ryanair’s board and senior management team. It may be that this is a requirement for Ryanair to move forward with the public. This statement may also be true for Ryanair staff.

5) We request help in addressing the tax issues currently arising for pilots in each base.

6) We request an explanation as to how the EU court ruling last week will impact us and the business.

7) We ask that Ryanair facilitate a meeting venue, duty travel and time off for pilot representatives from all basis to meet at least once per month. We request Ryanair allow this body access to the same level of legal, financial and tax expertise available to Ryanair. We currently have no access to any expertise and the imbalance is one of the greatest factors in the exodus of pilots.

We want to assist Ryanair recover from this fragile situation and get our customers back flying. We are very concerned if the 7 request above are now met pilots will continue to leave to our competitors and that the current operational issues will continue next summer.

Regards,
XXX ERC Reps.

* URGENT *
To: Michael Hickey
From: Base ERCs
Date: 19th September 2017

Dear Michael,
We refer to your memo dated 18th September 2017 and would like to firstly explain why we firmlyreject your, so called, “bonus scheme”.

1. We note that you mention 800 flight hours, as opposed to scheduled block hours. Pilots have
checked their logbooks, and many have never achieved 800 flight hours in a single 12 month period - ever. It is also worth noting that some have many years of data to draw from.
2. There is ambiguity surrounding whether you mean 10 working days off in total, or 10 plus a further 5 during your month off.
3. Regardless of willingness, the pilot would have no control over how many times he would be offered the opportunity to work a day off and, through no fault of their own, may never reach the target.
4. The payment offered for working a day off is no different from what a pilot would receive at any normal time (and it is clear that the current situation is far from normal). More over, contractors would receive no reward whatsoever for forfeiting their much needed rest. This is not exactly incentivising the workforce.
5. Please confirm what constitutes an “unauthorised absence”? Is this where there is no medical certificate to back up the absence, i.e. U/SICK? This is not a good precedent to set, as it may
cause pilots to operate when not fit to fly in order to attempt to meet the bonus target.
6. The increase to the “out of base” payments is also ambiguous as there is absolutely no mention of travel between bases. Please can you confirm that all travel arrangements will be
co-ordinated and paid for in advance by Ryanair, and that these per diem payments are not affected?
Furthermore, we would like to advise that with immediate effect the pilot workforce at the bases listed below rescind the goodwill that has been extended toward the company for many years in the form of working days off, turning up to work earlier than the STD-45 minutes (which in many bases is impossible to work to and maintain an on-time departure, this has been communicated to the company for many, many years), using their own mobile telephones for operational
purposes, answering phone calls from the company out of hours and on days off, using their own transport and resources for company business etc. In short, we shall now “work to rule”. We, as always, use the correct delay codes to stipulate why the inevitable delays the operation will suffer have occurred.

We do not want to inflict damage on the company or it’s reputation, and we certainly do want to disrupt any of our fare paying customer’s travel and holiday plans. It is not in our interest to do so, we want to make Ryanair a friendly, happy place to work where we can make long term careers. However, the continued erosion of the pilots terms and conditions over the past 10 to 15 years has to be not only stopped, but reversed.

The company faces a pilot shortage, and even if this is only for a short period of time, the reputational damage that could result over the next few months could be extremely long lasting,both in terms of customer and shareholder confidence. We are here to help, but the company
need to make some serious reforms in the employment model that it has enjoyed for so long at the pilot workforce’s detriment.

We are open to discussion as a group, however, we will not enter into discussions on a base-bybase level. Again, this is a “divide and conquer” technique that Ryanair management have employed and used to their benefit for a long time. We will bring our own negotiating
representative to the meeting. One thing that you can be assured of: we will continue to provide the same very high level of professionalism and safety in our work at all times. Regardless of what the company throws at us, this will never wain. We take great pride in the job that we do, and we will continue to provide this level of service and safety to our passengers and fellow crew members each day.

We would like to remind you that the ERC members (a setup of Ryanair’s making) are merely the conduit of this information, they are in no way to be held accountable for any difficulties the company endures through the work to rule action over the following months.
We look forward to hearing from you by return email as a matter of urgency.

Yours sincerely,
The Pilots of the following Ryanair Bases