Last year, the Lauda management threatened to station Boeing 737-800s from the Polish Ryanair subsidiary Buzz at Vienna Airport. This has now been put into practice, but now at the expense of Ryanair's Vienna base.
On October 23, 2020, a Boeing 737-800 of the Polish Buzz was transferred to Vienna. This has been in regular use from Vienna since October 25, 2020. On the national holiday, the SP-RKP operated flights to Vilnius, Dortmund and Thessaloniki on behalf of Ryanair. The “Buzz maiden flight” took place the day before on the Cologne route.
Buzz aircraft were already present in Vienna before, but only as part of the Warsaw (Modlin) -Wien-Warsaw (Modlin) flights. It is noteworthy that this route has now been "reversed" and is carried out from Austria with the Airbus A320 of the Maltese sister company Lauda Europe, while Buzz operates various routes with a Boeing 737-800 stationed in Vienna.
If it weren't for the fact that Ryanair has its own 737 workforce, which is employed for three planes in Vienna unpaid leave and subsequent part-time employment had threatened, the deployment would be more of a surprise. It can be assumed that the Viennese Ryanair crews will now be put under pressure by means of the supposedly cheaper Polish group colleagues.
Buzz only employs Polish staff in Vienna. On board, the crew speaks Polish to one another, as a local inspection by Aviation Direct showed on a flight on the national holiday. The crews are employed through the temporary employment agency Warsaw Aviation, based in Warsaw. The Ryanair crews, on the other hand, are employed by Crewlink and Workforce and, to a very limited extent, directly by the airline. Buzz's head office is not far from Warsaw Chopin Airport, which the Ryanair offshoot does not use at all. In contrast to the Laudamotion headquarters, which is fully paved with flags and neon signs, there are no external signs of buzz on the building.
Three Ryanair flight operations are stationed in Vienna: Lauda Europe with numerous Airbus A320s, Ryanair with at least one Boeing 737-800 and recently also Buzz with a Boeing 737-800. Only Michael O'Leary will know what sense it makes to station three of the company's own flight operations at one airport.
There has also been a change at Bratislava Airport. The previous Ryanair base was dissolved and taken over by the Polish sister company Buzz. Two Boeing 737-800s are currently stationed. Finally, the SP-RKQ and SP-RSL were deployed from the Slovak base. It is unclear whether and how many local employees were able to change employers. In Budapest and Prague, the withdrawal of Ryanair and the deployment of Buzz resulted in lower wages, according to unions. Alternatively, there was a threat of unemployment.
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