Ryanair has long been condemned as leading the industry toward cattle car conditions in air travel. The budget airline headed by CEO Michael O’Leary has now been fined 3 million euro ($3.17 million) for abandoning its passengers.
Ryanair recently confirmed (here) that it is working with Boeing to reduce the bathrooms on its planes to a single bathroom and installing pay toilets on 168 planes. O’Leary previously revealed his dream of having passengers stand on flights to stuff more people into planes, here.
Given O’Leary’s view of passengers as luggage with legs, it is not surprising that Italy’s civil aviation agency has accused the airline of abandoning passengers stranded by last month’s volcanic eruption. The agency found 178 cases of Ryanair passengers who didn’t receive mandatory assistance such as food, drink and lodgings during the flight shutdown. Of course, since Ryanair does not want to give them free toilets, drinks, or food on flights, it would have been a bit out of character to give them help in a natural emergency.
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Most places are reporting that they earn £33K a year, which is considerably above the national average wage for a job which is not highly skilled.
From what I’ve seen and heard (from friends who work at BA) the strikes now are purely over the fact that perks were removed from the people who went on strike last time. The perks are not a contractual obligation, they were told that they would lose their perks if they went on strike.
My theory is that if they keep trying to strike, nobody will want to use BA, BA will go under and then they’ll lose their jobs.
And anyone can be a first aider, I was made to become a qualified first aider even with a total fear of blood, it’s not a big deal and not exactly difficult. I would guess that these skills are rarely used and that they still spend most of their time fetching people peanuts.
Kaz. Despite the fact that twice they have come to the brink of an agreement and twice that agreement has been personally scuppered by Walsh riding roughshod over his own negotiating team.
I would not call £22K per year (NOT the claimed £50K) overpaid, especially for “Trolley Dollies” who are also all qualified First Aiders.
Since when is the head of BA a loony? I kinda like that he’s standing up to the overpaid trolley-dollys
O’Loony is currently vying with the head of British Airways for the title of “Biggest Psychopath in the Aviation Industry”. A battle in which the only losers will be the employees and passengers.
Flying is bullshit. If it’s less than a thousand miles from my house I’ll just drive.
My father was a pilot, first military and then commercial, and I grew up loving flying, but nowadays if I HAVE to get on a plane I need to drug myself up but good for the ordeal. The insistence by the industry of making sure that every seat is filled combined with a refusal to use the APU to run air conditioning while on the ground sets off my latent claustrophobia but good.
W=c,
In 100% sympathy. I’m old enough to recall when flying was a pleasure instead of the slog it has become.
The CEO probably just said piss on em. Well, Hail Cesar…
Given what passes for ‘flying’ these days, I doubt there is anything that could get me on a commercial airline ever again. And I used to love to fly.