Ryanair offers pilots €12,000 bonus to prevent further flight cancellations

Ryanair (LON:RYA) pilots have been offered a one-off €12,000 bonus to dismiss any holiday plans and tackle the cancelled flights “mess up”. 

Despite Monday’s apology given by chief executive Michael O’Leary, with promises of compensation, Ryanair customers have expressed outrage over the cancelled flights – including from many football fans who are at risk of missing the Manchester United game in Lisbon next month.

In a memo, seen by The Guardian, Ryanair is attempting to lure pilots from annual leave into work.

“To avoid further cancellations, we are requesting between one and two blocks of five days from every pilot who has already been assigned their month off,” wrote Michael Hickey, Ryanair’s chief operations officer.

“In recognition of the impact on you of the need to fly additional days I am implementing the following bonus scheme. All current pilots […] who remain operating Ryanair aircraft between Sept and 31st October 2018 will receive a once-off €12,000/£12,000 gross bonus for captains and €6,000/£6,000 for first officers in November 2018.”

Pilots who accept the offer will not receive the bonus until November 2018, in order to encourage them to stay with the Irish airline. The bonus payments are also conditional to pilots working over 800 flight hours in the year ending October 2018.

The airline they also plan to increase overnight payments that pilots receive when staying away from their base airport.

The Irish pilots’ union (IALPA) said the airline cannot blame the change because “they had at least two seasons’ notice of the new regulations in which to put their house in order.

“A separate point of note is Ryanair saying that the problem will last for about six weeks. This conveniently brings them to the winter schedule with its reduced overall crewing requirement, which is further evidence of the real problem being a shortage of flight crew.” they added.