* Ryanair * Ryanair * Ryanair *

deezell

devnull wrote: »

Actually Michael O'Leary is doing a good job of managing this whole incident so far if you ask me........
.

How much is he paying you for that love-in?? So he didn't try and blame it on Air traffic control disputes, Romanian storms etc? The Seat allocation debacle that caused boarding delays was not his fault? Nasty pilots looking for their holidays instead of working through, how dare they.
Proactive action that could have avoided this was not possible because it meant recognising employees rights and (heaven forbid) talking to their representatives to agree a solution, rather than just dictating to them. He doesn't give a rat's arse about his shareholders either, that would be my and your pension fund among other investors. Why would he care about mere workers? why change the habits of a lifetime.

Dymo

Michael O Leary is a company man, he will do anything to help improve Ryanair, whether that means splitting up families in search for profit or treating employees below par than other companies, the holy grail is profits.

He did send out the PR people to fend this off originally who tried to fool people in saying this is so they can improve punctuality, B.S.

He has to bow to some shareholder pressure that's how the change came a couple of years ago but that rope was loosened again and now he's back to squeezing everything possible.

If any other CEO didn't make a statement they would also be be vilified.

devnull

deezell wrote: »

How much is he paying you for that love-in?? So he didn't try and blame it on Air traffic control disputes, Romanian storms etc? The Seat allocation debacle that caused boarding delays was not his fault? Nasty pilots looking for their holidays instead of working through, how dare they.

Actually as someone who has had to work in a company where I have had to manage an annualised hours scheme which involves balancing short term customer needs with long term management of staffing hours, what he says makes a lot of sense, if you look at the way that Ryanair handles service disruption versus the way other airlines handle it.

There are several factors here that have come together to create this situation (in order of estimated effect)
i) The focus on short term customer satisfaction to reduce cancellations and increase punctuality rather than long term pilot hour management.
ii) The switch from one annual leave calendar to another one
iii) A summer of disruption that would be above average levels
iv) A slight increase in the numbe of pilots leaving the airline.

Generally airlines use one of the following systems during service disruption:

Traditional Method
If a crew gets delayed will just get that crew to run late but still operate the same flights they are expected to do so, when they run out of hours every other flight after that is cancelled with the standard hours or perhaps a bit less logged.

Ryanair Method
If there are known delays they will sub an extra crew in, the problem with this is that you then have two crews who will be working hours rather than one, and the total hours will be much higher than airline A to run the same number of flights.

The Ryanair method is BY FAR the best method for customers because it minimises delays and cancellations during unforeseen events and service disruption and it's why Ryanair have such a high punctuality and low cancellation rate compared to other airlines historically,, they just sub in spare crew to recover the service.

Ryanair would have built into their rostering that all staff would average a certain number of hours worked as subbed in crews and working as standby crew. What i suspect has happened is the model allowed for staff to work an average of a certain amount of standy hours based on historical reporting and at some point in the year it was looking like that the staff may go past that based on the run rate at that time.

At that point what Ryanair should have done is to cancel the odd flight and sub in less standby crews to try and claw some of that back, but I suspect they looked at their models and said, we've used more to this point than we said we would, but history shows that it will probably balance out as it always has done, but it hasn't and it's now reached critical levels where they have to make a choice of either cancelling 2% of flights to retain a reliable service for the other 98% or doing nothing and coping with the fact that every operational incident or major delay will lead to multiple short notice cancellations.

Add to all of this the change of leave calendar and what you've effectively got is a roster system that was designed for a different leave system not fit for purpose for a transitional period to a new system, a tendancy to put short term customer service (higher punctuality, less cancellations) before the long term sustainability of the accured pilot hours and a disruptive summer with ATC and Weather issues and it's a perfect storm.

marbless

Statement on Ryanair site says that "up to 50 flight a day" are cancelled up to end of October.

However, the list of flights cancelled for Thursday 21 September amounts to 84.

GhostyMcGhost

marbless wrote: »

Statement on Ryanair site says that "up to 50 flight a day" are cancelled up to end of October.

However, the list of flights cancelled for Thursday 21 September amounts to 84.

that and apparently one is cancelled that isn't even on the list :eek:

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/im-just-absolutely-gutted-mother-reveals-ryanair-flight-cancelled-despite-not-being-on-olearys-list-36147460.html

devnull

GhostyMcGhost wrote: »

that and apparently one is cancelled that isn't even on the list :eek:

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/im-just-absolutely-gutted-mother-reveals-ryanair-flight-cancelled-despite-not-being-on-olearys-list-36147460.html

Unforseen cancellations happen all of the time, ironically the fact Ryanair has a policy of cancelling only when all other options are exhausted and uses far more standby crews than most airlines is one of the main factors which has led to this mess.

I was traveling on Aer Lingus in the past where the flight was cancelled due to a tech fault in late evening the same time as they planned cancelling flights days in advance due to a work to rule, I just accepted that these things happen and didn't link it to the work to rule.

You have to ask yourself if it wasn't Ryanair would the press even run the story about that lady? Probably not.

deezell

devnull wrote: »

Actually as someone who has had to work in a company where I have had to manage an annualised hours scheme which involves balancing short term customer needs with long term management of staffing hours, what he says makes a lot of sense,...................

Except it made no sense, as in modern management science all the probabilities of events (storms, strikes etc) can be predicted or estimated, and an ongoing statistical analysis of the figures would produce outputs which would have been screaming out the chances of this disaster occurring. The probability of pilots having to take their leave was 100%, The rest would have been known with a percentage degree of uncertainty. A good stats man would produce a chart showing the chances of factors conspiring to overpower his backup plans to a high degree of accuracy, and it is at that point you take action. He talked about the alarm bells not going off. The alarm was ignored, or not set properly or switched off. Mick likes to gamble, and he lost this one.

devnull

deezell wrote: »

Except it made no sense, as in modern management science all the probabilities of events (storms, strikes etc) can be predicted or estimated, and an ongoing statistical analysis of the figures would produce outputs which would have been screaming out the chances of this disaster occurring. The probability of pilots having to take their leave was 100%, The rest would have been known with a percentage degree of uncertainty. A good stats man would produce a chart showing the chances of factors conspiring to overpower his backup plans to a high degree of accuracy,

The difference is there are no charts avaliable for what happens when you switch from an April to March to a January to December annual leave calendar because it has never been done before in Ryanair as all previous models and predictions have been based on the old leave system which is no longer in existence.

The fact that this is the first time it has happened and it coincides with the changing of the annual leave year is not unrelated, if they were as bad with the numbers as you claim it would have happened years ago, they clearly made some errors though, but this is an atypical year in Ryanair operations because of the change from one annual leave system to another.

What Ryanair should have done is cancel the odd flight when it wasn't the best use of pilot hours and sub in less standby crews to try and claw some of the over-run on hours used by standby crews back. But what they did was gave too much weight to offering the best customer service which increased their risk later on in the year of something like this happening.

They probabbly looked at historical data and said yes we've used more pilot hours to this point than we said we would, but history shows that that normally it balances itself out so they should be fine. The problem was that by this point they were in a situation where they were hoping for the best and not prepared for the worst. The worst happened and now there is a mess.

Ryanair simply was so focused on the short term goal being on time and not cancelling any flights during disruption that it came at the expense of the long term pilot hour management.

thewheel2.0

They gave me the option online to change to another flight. I took the same flight 1 day earlier.

A few hours later I went to the Website and it was down, when it came back up I had nothing in my upcoming trips. Anyone else experiencing this?

joeysoap

devnull wrote: »

Traditional Method
If a crew gets delayed will just get that crew to run late but still operate the same flights they are expected to do so, when they run out of hours every other flight after that is cancelled with the standard hours or perhaps a bit less logged.

Ryanair Method
If there are known delays they will sub an extra crew in, the problem with this is that you then have two crews who will be working hours rather than one, and the total hours will be much higher than airline A to run the same number of flights.

The Ryanair method is BY FAR the best method for customers because it minimises delays and cancellations during unforeseen events and service disruption and it's why Ryanair have such a high punctuality and low cancellation rate compared to other airlines historically,, they just sub in spare crew to recover the service.

Ryanair would have built into their rostering that all staff would average a certain number of hours worked as subbed in crews and working as standby crew.

If memory serves I recall RY cabin crew on RTE a few years ago saying that they didn't get paid while on standby (along with paying for training and their uniform). If true no problem having crew on standby.

Certainly better for the travelling public. Not great for staff if true. I know for certain that AL staff don't particularly like standby duty (would rather be flying) but they are paid.

My reading of the present situation is that RY allocated staff annual leave in the winter months, particularly January to March. And for one reason or another realised too late that the last 3 months were no longer in play this year. Of course this won't happen again next year as I suspect most staff will be expected to take their leave in advance between January and March.

If someone said that RY staff were on minimum wage (they're not) you might just think - that's Ryanair for you.

If the same person said that AL were on minimum wage (they're not) you would probably be horrified.

In my opinion anyway.

devnull

joeysoap wrote: »

If memory serves I recall RY cabin crew on RTE a few years ago saying that they didn't get paid while on standby (along with paying for training and their uniform). If true no problem having crew on standby.

Certainly better for the travelling public. Not great for staff if true. I know for certain that AL staff don't particularly like standby duty (would rather be flying) but they are paid.

My reading of the present situation is that RY allocated staff annual leave in the winter months, particularly January to March. And for one reason or another realised too late that the last 3 months were no longer in play this year. Of course this won't happen again next year as I suspect most staff will be expected to take their leave in advance between January and March.

If someone said that RY staff were on minimum wage (they're not) you might just think - that's Ryanair for you.

If the same person said that AL were on minimum wage (they're not) you would probably be horrified.

In my opinion anyway.

What's unique in this situation is that they are transitioning from an April to March model to a January to December model and that is at the core of the problem. Other airlines also have January to December but the key difference is that they have not had to have the transitional year and it's the transitional year that has caused the problem because the company has essentially not planned it correctly.

From what I have read Ryanair have pretty much confirmed that in this leave transitional period they have allowed and asked pilots to use a full years leave in just nine months of the year. This leads to more pilots being on vacation at once because they're squeezing in the same amount of leave spread over a shorter timeframe.

Example of the issue (dummy figures)
Say a Ryanair pilot has 36 days leave
April 2016 - March 2017 = 36 days = 3 days per month
April 2017 - December 2017 = 36 days = 4 days per month

There are 4,000 pilots in Ryanair. If every one is taking on average 1 day extra leave a month, you are effectively looking at massive shortfall of crew - obviously these figures are dummy and won't illustrate the real thing, but whatever figures you use, the maths are that if you try and squash 12 months leave into a 9 month calendar, you will have a 33% increase in number of days off taken by pilots on a monthly basis.

Of course pilots leaving will not have helped this situation, neither will bad weather or air traffic control strikes, but these things are contributoriy factors, the main factor in this is allowing all staff to take 12 months worth of leave in 9 months in a transitional period whch effectively has caused a large spike in the number of pilots who are on annual leave at one time.

joeysoap

thewheel2.0 wrote: »

They gave me the option online to change to another flight. I took the same flight 1 day earlier.

A few hours later I went to the Website and it was down, when it came back up I had nothing in my upcoming trips. Anyone else experiencing this?

Go to manage trip, input details and it should be there. You can request another email confirmation.

joeysoap

Don't really understand why RY are 'allowing' full years annual leave for 9 months work. In one of my previous employments we changed from Apr/Mar to Jan/Dec.
The year before the change (This year in RY's case) all the previous years leave had to be taken by March 31st. And the leave in that year (this year in RY's case) was 3/4 of the full normal leave to be taken by December, preferably well before Christmas and the New year.

To be fair to Ryanair this would have created absolute chaos if allowed to run until December.

billie1b

joeysoap wrote: »

Don't really understand why RY are 'allowing' full years annual leave for 9 months work. In one of my previous employments we changed from Apr/Mar to Jan/Dec.
The year before the change (This year in RY's case) all the previous years leave had to be taken by March 31st. And the leave in that year (this year in RY's case) was 3/4 of the full normal leave to be taken by December, preferably well before Christmas and the New year.

To be fair to Ryanair this would have created absolute chaos if allowed to run until December.

They're not, the whole company is transitioning from April - March to January - December, this year instead of the usual 29 - 32 days leave it was cut to 22 - 24 days for April to December and then back to normal for January 01st to a full year. The leave thing is not the problem

joeysoap

billie1b wrote: »

They're not, the whole company is transitioning from April - March to January - December, this year instead of the usual 29 - 32 days leave it was cut to 22 - 24 days for April to December and then back to normal for January 01st to a full year. The leave thing is not the problem

From the big man himself

https://youtu.be/6tCgDsDWo1U

billie1b

joeysoap wrote: »

From the big man himself

https://youtu.be/6tCgDsDWo1U

So I must ask for my extra 8 days i'm due this year even though our memo we received at the start if the year informing us we were only getting three quarters of the allocation was sent out to all of us with our amount of days due on it for the 9 months of this year.

MOH

The leave thing is a red herring, it's complete spin. They weren't suddenly caught out, out of the blue, by a sudden change in the basis on which leave is calculated.

They've known since the start of the year what the leave requirements were. They've known how many flights they had scheduled, and how many pilot hours they needed to fulfil those flights.

They've clearly had steady staff attrition during the year. Whatever the actual number of pilot they've lot, it's clearly significant. They didn't addrss that, or respond to it. They could have made a decision to scale back on scheduled flights earlier in the year, but didn't want to impact profit during peak (and most expensive) season. They could also have scaled back and cancelled some autumn flights months ago, giving passengers plenty of notice. but again, that would have impacted revenues.

Instead of that, they let it go right down to the wire. They gambled their contingency on the fact that despite the pilot loss they'd make it through. Maybe they would have without external events such as ATC strikes, but that's why you need contingency in the first place.

The whole situation is a direct result of staff policies, doing nothing to prevent staff drain, and gambling that they'd make it through anyway. And those policies come from the top down. O'Leary's not taking the flak to divert it from underlings, or trying to put short-term passenger considerations first, he's reaping the results of his own management decisions while still trying to spin this as an externally-imposed issue.

deezell

MOH wrote: »

The leave thing is a red herring, it's complete spin. They weren't suddenly caught out, out of the blue, by a sudden change in the basis on which leave is calculated.

They've known since the start of the year what the leave requirements were. They've known how many flights they had scheduled, and how many pilot hours they needed to fulfil those flights.

They've clearly had steady staff attrition during the year. Whatever the actual number of pilot they've lot, it's clearly significant. They didn't addrss that, or respond to it. They could have made a decision to scale back on scheduled flights earlier in the year, but didn't want to impact profit during peak (and most expensive) season. They could also have scaled back and cancelled some autumn flights months ago, giving passengers plenty of notice. but again, that would have impacted revenues.

Instead of that, they let it go right down to the wire. They gambled their contingency on the fact that despite the pilot loss they'd make it through. Maybe they would have without external events such as ATC strikes, but that's why you need contingency in the first place.

The whole situation is a direct result of staff policies, doing nothing to prevent staff drain, and gambling that they'd make it through anyway. And those policies come from the top down. O'Leary's not taking the flak to divert it from underlings, or trying to put short-term passenger considerations first, he's reaping the results of his own management decisions while still trying to spin this as an externally-imposed issue.

ABSOLUTELY correct. Would the Ryanair plants on this blog like to respond?

devnull

MOH wrote: »

The leave thing is a red herring, it's complete spin. They weren't suddenly caught out, out of the blue, by a sudden change in the basis on which leave is calculated.

They've known since the start of the year what the leave requirements were. They've known how many flights they had scheduled, and how many pilot hours they needed to fulfil those flights.

They've clearly had steady staff attrition during the year. Whatever the actual number of pilot they've lot, it's clearly significant. They didn't addrss that, or respond to it. They could have made a decision to scale back on scheduled flights earlier in the year, but didn't want to impact profit during peak (and most expensive) season. They could also have scaled back and cancelled some autumn flights months ago, giving passengers plenty of notice. but again, that would have impacted revenues.

You complete forget to include the large amount of standby duties that Ryanair do in addition to the rostered pilot hours to prevent same day cancellations and excessive delays and to keep punctuality up something that they do a lot more than other airlines which is one of the core issues here, they put short term customer service ahead of long term pilot hours.

If they didn't sub in so many crews during major disruption it would be far easier to plan long term pilot hour management because there would be less unknowns, but at the start of the year you do not know how many standy hours pilots will run up because of the fact that it is fully dependent on factors outside the airlines control.

MOH

devnull wrote: »

You complete forget to include the large amount of standby duties that Ryanair do in addition to the rostered pilot hours to prevent same day cancellations and excessive delays and to keep punctuality up something that they do a lot more than other airlines which is one of the core issues here, they put short term customer service ahead of long term pilot hours.

If they didn't sub in so many crews during major disruption it would be far easier to plan long term pilot hour management because there would be less unknowns, but at the start of the year you do not know how many standy hours pilots will run up because of the fact that it is fully dependent on factors outside the airlines control.

I'm not forgetting it, that's the core of the problem.
But it's their business/operating model. They know that. They know they're going to need standby pilots. Obviously they don't know how many, but by now they must have pretty well developed means of estimating what those requirements will be, and allow contingency for that.
As they starting losing pilots during the year, at some point months ago flags must have starting going up that they were eating into that contingency and risking not being able to cover flights. They'd have to have identified the risk then.
They could have tried to address staff issues then, or started cancelling flights a couple of months ahead. But instead there was a management decision to take the chance that they'd still have enough cover if they got lucky, and they didn't. And now they've ended up disrupting passengers at short notice and facing a PR disaster.

I'm not one for bashing Ryanair at every opportunity. In fact, I'm not even saying they were wrong here from a business point of view: they made a business gamble, it didn't come off and they're paying for it, but it could easily have gone the other way.
But them trying to spin it as some kind of unforeseen event that they couldn't possibly have predicted, and hit them completely out of the blue, is just more PR spin.

bill66

I love this thread, Ryanair carries more international passengers than any other airline in the world, heading for 131 million passengers this year. They made a profit of 1.24 billion last year, but according to the "experts" on here who have not or will not fly with them, they should be doing it better.

How exactly?

joeysoap

Might share a little bit of that profit with their staff i.e. better working conditions.

bill66

joeysoap wrote: »

Might share a little bit of that profit with their staff i.e. better working conditions.

Brilliant, I expect MO'L to be on to you any minute, a business mind as sharp as that should not be wasted.

charlie14

bill66 wrote: »

Brilliant, I expect MO'L to be on to you any minute, a business mind as sharp as that should not be wasted.

I doubt it.
May have been an idea years ago, but it looks looks as if it is too little too late at this stage.

joeysoap

bill66 wrote: »

Brilliant, I expect MO'L to be on to you any minute, a business mind as sharp as that should not be wasted.

Pilots having to pay for a bottle of water? Staff away from home base paying for their own accommodation? All that a few rich shareholders can get richer.

O'Leary himself boasted that he never bought a pen, always took them out of hotels. Class act, to quote a mayo politician.

O'Leary never gave a toss for his passengers, we only guessed until now he also didn't give a toss for his employees. Or contractors as the case may be.

Don't do as I do. Do as I say.

bill66

joeysoap wrote: »

Pilots having to pay for a bottle of water? Staff away from home base paying for their own accommodation? All that a few rich shareholders can get richer.

O'Leary himself boasted that he never bought a pen, always took them out of hotels. Class act, to quote a mayo politician.

O'Leary never gave a toss for his passengers, we only guessed until now he also didn't give a toss for his employees. Or contractors as the case may be.

Don't do as I do. Do as I say.

So it's not Ryanair you don't like, it's the capitalist system. Well i'm sorry you don't like it but that is the arena business operates in and Ryanair are very successful at it.

More importantly a company that you claim doesn't give a toss for it's passengers has 131 million of them this year alone. Your argument does not stand up to the briefest scrutiny.

Wanderer78

bill66 wrote:

So it's not Ryanair you don't like, it's the capitalist system. Well i'm sorry you don't like it but that is the arena business operates in and Ryanair are very successful at it.

The problem is more so with the form of capitalism that we have decided to introduce, I.e. neoliberalism. It's inherently unstable, destructive and regressive for our species and planet. It's time for us to try another form of it before it's too late.

charlie14

bill66 wrote: »

So it's not Ryanair you don't like, it's the capitalist system. Well i'm sorry you don't like it but that is the arena business operates in and Ryanair are very successful at it.

Would that be the same arena our banks were operating in when they wrecked the economy of this country ?

Wanderer78

charlie14 wrote:

Would that be the same arena our banks were operating in when they wrecked the economy of this country ?

To be fair, it was more than just our banks, it was the global financial system

killbillvol2

bill66 wrote: »

So it's not Ryanair you don't like, it's the capitalist system. Well i'm sorry you don't like it but that is the arena business operates in and Ryanair are very successful at it.

More importantly a company that you claim doesn't give a toss for it's passengers has 131 million of them this year alone. Your argument does not stand up to the briefest scrutiny.

You've posted a few times now and I still have no idea what your point is.

People want/need to get from A to B. 131 million flew with FR because they have more flights than other airlines and are often cheap. Doesn't mean they're joining a fan club or that they were treated well.