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#1 Ryanair Stansted, three years, number one since March, and the Stansted threads on here are the 'first base' comparisons. Here is Stansted from inside, because it is the biggest Ryanair base in the UK and the UK contract is its own thing since Brexit.
The UK contract
Ryanair UK is the post Brexit UK registered airline for the UK bases (Liam's thread on the group airlines). The contract is a UK employment contract with UK tax and national insurance, a UK pension auto enrolment, and the union recognition through Unite at the UK bases. The structure: basic, sector pay, commission, allowances, in pounds. The pay is the Ryanair pay in the UK numbers, which for London is tight in year one and fine by year three with the commission.
The base
Enormous. Dozens of aircraft, hundreds of crew, four waves a day, a network to the whole of Europe and beyond. Two crew rooms. The base management is experienced and the operation runs on rails. It is the base where the Ryanair way is done at scale.
The Essex commute
Stansted is in Essex, 40 miles from central London, and the crew live in Bishop's Stortford, Harlow, Chelmsford, Braintree and the villages, not in London. A London flat and a 5am sign on is a 90 minute drive and a career ending mistake. The experienced crew live within 25 minutes and the base group has the flat share list. The M11 at 4:30am is the Stansted commute and it is fine until it is not.
The 5am wave
The first wave: sign on at 4:45 for the 6am departures to Dublin, Málaga, Alicante, Faro, Palma, Milan, Kraków. Four sectors, sign off at 3pm. The second wave at noon to midnight. The waves alternate on the roster and the body never fully adjusts to either. The Stansted crew are the world experts on the 4am alarm.
Number one at three years
The application, the record check, the course, the check flight (Alex's thread). At Stansted the number one course comes at two to three years for the crew with clean records because the base is big and the turnover creates positions. The role: the briefing, the paperwork, the crew, the captain, the on time performance, and the service on the A321 with four crew. The pay step is the number one allowance per sector and it matters.
The honest Stansted
A good base to learn the operation at scale and a hard base to live near on a junior salary. The commission is where the money is and the Stansted sun routes sell well. The winter is thinner than the continental bases because the UK leisure market slows. The crew community is big and Essex and warm. And the number one course at three years is the fastest route to a supervisory grade at any UK airline.
For applicants
If you are allocated Stansted: live close, learn to sell, be early to every 4:45, and put your name down for the number one course at 18 months. The base rewards the reliable. It has no time for the rest.
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#2 Dublin number one, and Stansted is the base we send the juniors to when they want to learn fast. The scale is real. Sean's commute advice is the whole thing: 25 minutes or nothing.
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#3 Dublin, and the number one at three years at Stansted matches what we see: the big bases promote fastest. The check flight is the same everywhere. The queue is shorter at Stansted.
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#4 Just finished training, allocated a continental base, and I asked for Stansted. Reading this I am glad and sorry in equal measure. The M11 at 4:30 sounds like a specific kind of life.
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#5 easyJet Luton, so the other Essex adjacent base, and the London flat mistake is universal across both airports. The crew who live in the city last a year. The crew who live in Harlow last a career.
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#6 Jet2 Leeds, and the 5am wave is the same religion in the north. The Stansted and Leeds crews would understand each other completely. The M11 and the M62 at 4:30.
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#7 Bergamo, and the winter being thinner at Stansted than the continental bases is a real difference: the UK leisure market sleeps in January and the Italian does not. Our commission holds. Yours dips. Good honest thread.
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#8 Galway, Ryanair assessment in three weeks, and I put Dublin, Cork and Shannon down. Now I understand what Stansted is and I am slightly tempted by the number one at three years. Slightly.
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#9 @danny1999 put it down as a fourth. If you get it, you learn the job at scale and you are a number one before your Dublin batch mates. If you do not, Dublin is home. Both are wins.
