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#1 Dublin, number one, five years, and the winter base closure thread on here is a first year's experience. The closures are seasonal and the crew who have been through several know the shape. Here it is for the crew whose base is on the list this winter.
The closures
Ryanair opens and closes bases seasonally and announces the winter closures and reductions in the autumn: a base loses aircraft for the winter or closes entirely until spring. The crew at that base are offered transfers to bases that need crew for the winter (often the ones with the sun routes or the diaspora routes), unpaid leave, or in some cases a seasonal layoff with a return in spring, depending on the contract type. The agency crew have the fewest protections and the direct crew the most, as every contract thread says.
The transfer offers
A list of bases with winter need, a preference form, an allocation by the base need and the seniority and the record. The crew who are flexible get a base; the crew who can only do their home base get the unpaid leave or the layoff. The transfers can be to another country: the Malta base, the Canary Islands bases, the Italian bases, the Polish ones. Two weeks' notice is not unusual and the crew who were moved to Malta with two weeks' notice are the ones in the title and they are real and some of them are still in Malta by choice.
The unpaid leave
An option for the crew who cannot transfer and would rather keep the job than take the layoff: a winter of no pay, the contract held, the return in spring. The crew who take it have a winter plan (another job, the family, a course) and the ones who do not have a hard winter. Kate's agency contract questions apply: what happens if the base closes is the question to have asked before signing.
The crew who were moved
The Malta two week notice group from a closed German base a few winters ago: a flat found in a week, the Malta Air contract (which they were already on), the sun, the winter of Malta to Europe flying, and in spring the choice to go back or stay. Half stayed. The transfer that looked like a punishment became the base they wanted. The ones who could not go took the unpaid leave and came back in spring to a base that had changed.
How to prepare
Know your contract's base closure clause. Have the preference form ready with real options, not only home. Have the winter plan if the unpaid leave is the likely outcome. And know that the closures are seasonal and the spring reopens most of them, which does not help in November and is true in April.
For the crew at a base on this winter's list
The transfer is the job continued somewhere else and the unpaid leave is the job held. The layoff is the one to avoid if the contract allows it. The number ones at the receiving bases are expecting you and the Malta crew room has a kettle.
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#2 Bergamo number one, and the Italian bases receive the winter transfers from the closed northern bases every year and the crew who arrive with two weeks' notice are the ones we look after. The Malta group Liam describes is a known story and the half who stayed are the base now.
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#3 Ryanair, continental base, first winter, and my base is reduced for the winter and the preference form arrived last week. Liam's 'real options, not only home' is the thing I needed before I filled it in with Dublin, Cork and Shannon only.
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#4 Ex Thomas Cook, and 'what happens if the base closes' was the question in my agency contract thread and Liam has written the answer from the number one's chair. Know the clause. Have the winter plan. The spring reopens most of them.
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#5 Stansted, and Stansted receives the winter transfers too and the crew from the closed bases are good crew who had a bad November. The two weeks' notice is the Ryanair pace applied to the roster. The kettle is real.
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#6 Ryanair Porto, and the Porto base's diaspora routes mean we are a receiving base in winter, not a closing one, and the crew who transfer to us from the closed bases find the Portuguese winter kinder than they expected. Liam is right that the transfer can become the base you wanted.
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#7 Dublin, and the preference form with real options is the thing I tell every junior in October: the crew who put three Irish bases on a form for a winter closure get the unpaid leave. The crew who put Malta get Malta. Both are choices.
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#8 @connordub the preference form with Dublin, Cork and Shannon only is the unpaid leave form. Add two sun bases and a Polish one and you have a winter with pay. The spring brings you home.
