Ryanair management has said it will spend 100 million Euro a year on recruiting pilots and increasing their pay.</p>
However, those at one of its biggest bases, London Stansted, recently rejected an offer that Ryanair maintains will make them 20 per cent better off than counterparts at rivals such as easyJet.
Ryanair has not said how many of its 4,200 pilots have accepted new deals nor named all the bases that have agreed to them. The 10 are said to include those where the airline has small numbers of craft and pilots, including Belfast, Glasgow Prestwick and Bournemouth.
The airline said in September that it would pay supplements of €10,000 a year to captains and €5,000 to first officers at its Dublin, Stansted, Frankfurt and Berlin bases, beginning in October.
Ryanair’s figures, published again with its results yesterday, show that pilots’ basic pay is below that of rivals, but when other payments are added in, the total is higher.
From this month, the airline says it will pay Dublin-based captains a basic of €84,650 compared with the €92,400 paid to Norwegian Air International, which is recruiting pilots for a planned Dublin base.
Ryanair’s sector payments are higher, at €45,500, compared with €31,000 at Norwegian.
According to reports, Irish airline’s pilots receive €12,000 productivity, €6,000 expenses and €8,000 in pension contributions, for a total of €156,150 a year.
Norwegian pays €4,600 to its captains’ pensions in Ireland, but no productivity and expenses, for a total of €128,000.
