Ryanair v Virgin Atlantic

Fat Al

Hi folks,

Was just wondering Ryanair and Virgin Atlantic are both very successful airlines but have very different stratagies in management particularly towards their staff. What are your opinions on these?

thebiglad

Fat Al wrote: »

Hi folks,

Was just wondering Ryanair and Virgin Atlantic are both very successful airlines but have very different stratagies in management particularly towards their staff. What are your opinions on these?

What is your question?

This is comparing apples and horses...

Ryanair have a budget, couldn't care less for the customers approach and therefore unhappy staff not an issue. Virgin Atlantic are a pricey, customer friendly airline and therefore need staff motivated to achieve their aims.

ei.sdraob

they are both focused on making profit, and are not burdened by unions like Aer Lingus...

seems anything that gets unionized turns to dust

Sleepy

Having just read both of Richard Branson's books on business and having read Siobhan Creaton's Ryanair in the past. , there's more similarities that one might imagine to their management style. Branson is actually quite complimentary about what Michael O' Leary has done with Ryanair.

1. Both are anti-union. Branson will only get involved in start-ups these days after his failure with Virgin Express where he inherited EBA's unionised staff and blames the unionisation for the failure of that airline.

2. Both pay lower base rates to their staff than the unionised (former)state-owned airlines but provide incentive schemes to allow staff out-earn their counterparts.

3. Both pay attention to what their customer base wants: with Ryanair it's bargain basement prices - people will suffer lower levels of service and cramped planes for cheap short-haul flights. With Virgin, it's higher levels of comfort for business travellers than other airlines and reasonable fares for coach.

4. Both fought hard against an existing monopolistic carrier.

As far as I can see, the main difference between Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair are the routes they cover and the markets they cater to.

Fat Al

Sleepy - thats excellent.thanks for that.

Thebidlad- I suppose thats my point that they are like comparing "apples and horses" but yet achived huge success. My question is how did they both achieve that success with very different policies to thier staff? But as sleepy pointed out they have more similarities than i realized.

thebiglad

Fat Al wrote: »

Sleepy - thats excellent.thanks for that.

Thebidlad- I suppose thats my point that they are like comparing "apples and horses" but yet achived huge success. My question is how did they both achieve that success with very different policies to thier staff? But as sleepy pointed out they have more similarities than i realized.

Bottom line you nuture a company culture.

If your staff have no expectations and are afraid to death of losing the job then you can get away with nearly anything.

Perhaps it is a question more of psychology than business.

Definitely the discouragement of unions is a big factor - the same question can be asked of the Quinn Companies where unions are not allowed yet highly successful (apparently)

syklops

If your staff have no expectations and are afraid to death of losing the job then you can get away with nearly anything.

Surely in the years of the Celtic tiger there were very few people working for ryanair who were scared to death of losing their jobs?

thebiglad

syklops wrote: »

Surely in the years of the Celtic tiger there were very few people working for ryanair who were scared to death of losing their jobs?

Then explain how they get away with making people pay their own training and uniform costs etc the people employed for some reason accept their situation - with all the bad press (and blogs) why would anyone apply to work for Ryanair - but they do...

From personal experience working for Quinn during that same celtic tiger they relied upon low employment in the cavan/fermanagh area where the only option was to up sticks to Dublin if wanted to work other than Quinn.

syklops

thebiglad wrote: »

Then explain how they get away with making people pay their own training and uniform costs etc the people employed for some reason accept their situation - with all the bad press (and blogs) why would anyone apply to work for Ryanair - but they do...

Well I work in IT, and have paid for most of the courses I have done out of my own pocket. No one forced me to pay for it for fear of losing my job, but I want to work in IT, so don't mind paying for the courses because it improves my chances of getting the job I want.

In a few jobs I had to wear a suit, which i paid for. I didnt get any money towards it from the company.

thebiglad wrote: »

From personal experience working for Quinn during that same celtic tiger they relied upon low employment in the cavan/fermanagh area where the only option was to up sticks to Dublin if wanted to work other than Quinn.

Well why are you complaining about Ryanair and then using an example from a company not related to ryanair?

Sleepy

As I pointed out, both companies encourage an entrepeneurial approach from their staff. Their cabin crew tend to earn more than industry counterparts despite a lower base salary.

I'm not so sure about Ryanair but Virgin certainly foster a culture where any member of staff can get to the very top of the organisation. Branson loves to quote examples of people who've worked as cleaners within Virgin who've progressed to senior management.

To my mind, that's fostering a culture of personal responsibility where if you work hard you'll be rewarded rather than grouped with all other employees in the same role as you getting the same level of pay regardless of performance. Given the choice, I'll always work in that environment.

bladeruner

Hi Sleepy,
I tend to disagree with nearly everything you have said.

Sleepy wrote: »

1. Both are anti-union. Branson will only get involved in start-ups these days after his failure with Virgin Express where he inherited EBA's unionised staff and blames the unionisation for the failure of that airline.
Virgin has lots of unionised groups eg. the pilots and most of the cabin crew, it dosnt seem to have done the company any harm at all.

2. Both pay lower base rates to their staff than the unionised (former)state-owned airlines but provide incentive schemes to allow staff out-earn their counterparts.
I can guarantee you that no cabin crew at Ryanair recruited within the last 5 years out-earns cabin crew at Virgin.

3. Both pay attention to what their customer base wants: with Ryanair it's bargain basement prices - people will suffer lower levels of service and cramped planes for cheap short-haul flights. With Virgin, it's higher levels of comfort for business travellers than other airlines and reasonable fares for coach.
On this point we agree.

4. Both fought hard against an existing monopolistic carrier.
Wrong, I think you will find that Aer Lingus were not allowed to operate on certain routes to the UK ( like Stansted ) that were the making of Ryanair.
For all their complaints about state protectionism around Europe, Ryanair have forgotten that they benefited enormously from it .

Sleepy wrote: »

As I pointed out, both companies encourage an entrepeneurial approach from their staff. Their cabin crew tend to earn more than industry counterparts despite a lower base salary.
Again wrong, Ryanair cabin crew are now taken on as contractors and if they dont fly ( on call, for example ) they dont get paid , making it easy to be on less then minimum wage for the amount of hours worked.

Given the choice, I'll always work in that environment.
Having first hand experience of Ryanair , I would love to see some people who wax lyrical about Ryanair as the prime example of irish industry actually work there for 6 months and then get back to us here for a report.

Thebiglad, Aviation is an incredibly specific industry , the qualifications are difficult to attain and generally totally useless outside of aviation .
In fact they can be useless within aviation too, if you are trained to fly or fix one of Ryanairs Boeing 737's you cannot just walk on to an Aer Lingus airbus or an Aer Arann ATR, you would have to start at the beginning again and do a whole course.
So if you are interested in aviation and wish to reside in ireland , you have really only 4 choices ,Ryanair , Aer Lingus ,Cityjet or Aer arann.
Its a tiny tiny club , and until 2007 , not many were hiring.
So airlines in Ireland can do as they wish , but be safe in knowing that there is always another irish person who would love to move back from the Uk or europe to fill the seat of a disaffected soul.

so to answer your question , why would you even bother applying ?

well to some flying is glamourous and always will be but to many Aviation is a Vocation, an alter over which relationships and money will be spilt.

To finish with , my opinion on how Ryanair treat their staff?
Well why not have a look at the amount of court cases taken by Current and former Ryanair employees against Ryanair and compare and contrast this with every other airline. (or any other industry for that matter )
Im sure we have all read about one or two in the press over the years, well let me just assure you all that probably 99% go unreported .
I know of no other employer (short of a sweat shop boss in Taiwan or china ) where the employers are so vindictive against their own staff.
Where employment law is flouted so willy-nilly .

How did Virgin get so successful with out pursuing this policy ? Just look at Southwest airlines in the US , the airline Ryanair is "supposed" to be modelled on.

Sleepy

Good post bladerunner. My info on the area is coming pretty much exclusively from the POV of the bosses of the airlines.

Virgin may have unionised groups but Branson has no time for them. They're also incredibly fussy about the pilots they recruit, in his books Branson mentions that he looks for a minimum of 10 years experience in pilots wishing to fly their jets.

Comparing Virgin cabin crew to Ryanair cabin crew isn't exactly fair. They're operating in very different jobs given the difference in long-haul versus short-haul. Branson mentioned in his book that his pilots and cabin crew were on a lower basic wage than their BA counter-parts but more than made up the difference in bonuses etc. I've heard the same reported of Ryanair cabin crew versus Aer Lingus staff, though admittedly the book I read that in was 4/5 years old.

bladeruner

Sleepy wrote: »

Comparing Virgin cabin crew to Ryanair cabin crew isn't exactly fair.

Fair point , accepted.


my wife used to work as cabin crew for Ryanair and she was earning very good money back in 2000, comparable with Aer Lingus.
But now Ryanair cabin crew are quite probably the lowest paid cabin crew flying on jet aircraft in europe.


The difference is that staff at Virgin are (generally) happy and the morale is sky high (excuse the pun) despite the relatively low wages.
The old sign you see in offices sometimes " The beatings will continue until morale improves" was probably thought up with Ryanair in mind.

I read Bransons book and I do admire him for what he has accomplished but I admire him more for being able to create a business empire where he is respected by his staff and customers.

DrumSteve

everytime i see a thread start like that i think someone is writing an essay...

btw was on ryanair last week for the first time. completely changed perception of them. they weren't actually that bad...

Sleepy

I fly with them twice a week on the Dublin - Gatwick route DrumSteve and tbh, the few times I've flown Aer Lingus on the same route I've noticed no discernable difference between them.

I was actually hugely impressed with Ryanair's handling of the route during the adverse weather around Christmas. Easyjet were cancelling flights left, right and centre and the worst I experienced with Ryanair was an hour and a half delay on my homeward leg because Dublin airport had closed for a couple of hours earlier that day to de-ice the runway. They just got on with it, apologised for the delay over the tannoy and got us in the air. One of the staff even cracked a line about 'It's alright, Michael was out on the runway with his zippo to make sure we'd be able to take off'.

From what bladeruner says, it doesn't sound like a great place to be cabin crew any more but once you read the website when you're booking flights, they're a great airline to fly with (the stupid fvckin fanfare sound on landing aside!).

DrumSteve

yeah that tannoy is fairly annoying alright!