The employees of the Ryanair base in Vienna received bad news on Wednesday. The Irish carrier will close the base consisting of three Boeing 737-800s at the end of the year. This has fatal consequences for the staff, because either they move to Dublin, Athens or Thessaloniki or they lose their jobs and thus their income.

A few weeks ago, Ryanair was pushing its own employees in unpaid vacations and with tough methods, because if you didn't want that, you risked dismissal. The Vienna base was only opened in order to be able to put the then subsidiary Laudamotion and, of course, its staff under massive pressure. Since the wages of Lauda employees could be reduced significantly, Lauda Europe can now produce cheaper than Ryanair itself.

But the replacement for the capacity of the Ryanair base in Vienna was set up at the end of October. The Polish sister company Buzz opened a base and instead of the Ryanair DAC operates numerous flights. In the beginning it was Polish employees who flown in from Katowice, now people with a Slovak trade license who are formally self-employed are used. reports Aviation Direct.

How many Ryanair employees in Vienna are affected by the closure of the Ryanair DAC base is unclear. Three Boeing 737-800s were stationed, but there is no information about how many people were dismissed before the bad news. Aviation Direct has the internal letter in which the Vienna Ryanair staff is informed about the closure of the base and the option of termination or going to Ireland or Greece.

The Ryanair subsidiaries Lauda Europe and Buzz will therefore be operating in Vienna on January 1, 2021. In addition, machines from Malta Air and Ryanair DAC will continue to be used. These are not stationed in the federal capital, but fly into Vienna from other bases. For example from Luqa (Malta) to Vienna or from Bergamo (Italy) to Vienna. Since the subsidiaries are all active under Ryanair flight numbers (FR), they are formally Ryanair flights that are operated by a subsidiary in the so-called wet lease.