Ryanair set to close German bases after pilots reject pay deal
Budget carrier Ryanair will close its base at Frankfurt Hahn airport from 1 November, it was revealed this afternoon, after failing to agree pay cuts with its German pilots.
Two further bases at Berlin Tegel and Dusseldorf airports are likely to also close at the end of the year, the Irish airline said in a memo to the pilots and seen by Morning Wire.
The closures come after a small majority of pilots voted down the pay deal, with an unspecified number of redundancies set to follow.
In the memo, the airline said that only 49.4 per cent of pilots voted for the deal, meaning it was rejected by two or three votes.
Ryanair said that the job cuts were necessary due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the memo, the airline said: “[German union] the VC have voted for job cuts and base closures when they could have preserved all the jobs.
“We must move on with alternative measures to deliver savings, which regrettably will mean base closures and dismissals.
“We made it clear [to the unions] throughout negotiations that if the ballot was unsuccessful, then the next step would have to be dismissals”, the memo continued.
“It is bizarre that the VC canvassed against their own deal knowing full well that the result would be base closures and job losses”.
Last week it was reported that Ryanair’s subsidiary Lauda would close its base at Stuttgart airport after failing to agree similar cuts.
The budget airline will terminate the contracts of employees working there after almost all pilots rejected the new pay offer.
According to the memo, 70 per cent of pilots across Ryanair’s network have accepted the pay deal.
At the beginning of July UK pilots union Balpa announced that 96 per cent of Ryanair’s pilots in this country had voted to accept a 20 per cent pay cut.
The union said that it was the right thing to do to avoid up to 3,000 job cuts at the carrier, which has been hammered by the current crisis.
The deal will save 260 of the 330 pilots roles that were at risk, Balpa said.
Pilots agreed to the measures after chief executive Michael O’Leary said that the jobs would go unless all staff accepted such a pay cut.