BRU reacts on the subsidising of regional airports

[Acid-drop]

Social constraints and poverty exist but they are by no means an excuse for someone to not go to school to get more education. It all boils down to individual choices and I don't see why the youth in and around Charleroi can't become top medical staff if they are offered all the possibilities.

Well, you'll probably don't understand as you live on a different planet than them, but try to imagine.
You are 8 year old, your parents are plit-up, you change appartment every year, from one social aid to another. you mother live with 750 euro per month from the CPAS, your father doesn't want to talk to you anymore. You turn 10, your mother has drugs problems. 14, you get raped by your step father who doesn't give a shit of you. Of course, you don't follow school anymore. 16 you quit school. 18, you get finally some unemployment money to live on your own. Misery is there, but at least you are free.

This is extreme, but it is real. I can only try to imagine what's it like. But i will give respect to anybody in that situation who can manage to get a job, any job.

Far off topic indeed.

[Flanker]

Well, you'll probably don't understand as you live on a different planet than them, but try to imagine.
You are 8 year old, your parents are plit-up, you change appartment every year, from one social aid to another. you mother live with 750 euro per month from the CPAS, your father doesn't want to talk to you anymore. You turn 10, your mother has drugs problems. 14, you get raped by your step father who doesn't give a shit of you. Of course, you don't follow school anymore. 16 you quit school. 18, you get finally some unemployment money to live on your own. Misery is there, but at least you are free.

This is extreme, but it is real. I can only try to imagine what's it like. But i will give respect to anybody in that situation who can manage to get a job, any job.

Everyone has a story but I doubt there are any people close to the story you present.
I have actually had the opportunity to meet with people who work at CRL. I don't think that luggage loaders need a high school diploma but all the rest pretty much do. Most people I met were quite charming, many of them are from better families. Some are even so spoiled that they can afford to be lazy, good for them. Several even work a job there to start repaying their pilot training while building some airport experience.
There are also the less fortunate. I've talked to several of them and none of them talked to me about their job as something for the long term.

I think that you've got the wrong picture, my friend.
On a forum like this, expect to talk to people who have seen the things you are talking nonsense about.

[Acid-drop]

shocking.

[Passenger]

I have personally visited these hospitals

Yep. You surely have done so. Last night probably: a return flight with Air Internet - your only source.

As opposed to aviation where fuel dominates the bills, medical care is a manpower-intensive sector where most expenses are human labor, hence create much more end jobs than aviation investments.

1. Fuel is not "dominating the bills". I've just checked it in my last IATA course (which isn't that old). Fuel is only the most unpredictable cost.

2. Indeed: medical care is a manpower-intensive sector. But medical staff must be both skilled and experienced, so it takes at least 5 years before you have formed them. Unless all nurses from Liège, Antwerp and Ostend are willing to move to the Borinage.

3. there is no market for domestic medical tourism - unless you close all regional hospitals in Belgium.

3. If you want international medical tourism, your staff needs to combine medical skills with medical experience and with language knowledge. How many nurses in Wallonia can speak fleunt English nowadays?

4. medical tourism in Europe is small scale - even if I include cataract operations in Turkey.

5. and finally: if it really would be possible, someone from the medical branch would already have started it. Or do you really think that you are the very first person to come up with this idea - just like your turboprop fleet and your African Experience?

[Flanker]

1. Fuel is not "dominating the bills". I've just checked it in my last IATA course (which isn't that old). Fuel is only the most unpredictable cost.

2. Indeed: medical care is a manpower-intensive sector. But medical staff must be both skilled and experienced, so it takes at least 5 years before you have formed them. Unless all nurses from Liège, Antwerp and Ostend are willing to move to the Borinage.

3. there is no market for domestic medical tourism - unless you close all regional hospitals in Belgium.

3. If you want international medical tourism, your staff needs to combine medical skills with medical experience and with language knowledge. How many nurses in Wallonia can speak fleunt English nowadays?

4. medical tourism in Europe is small scale - even if I include cataract operations in Turkey.

5. and finally: if it really would be possible, someone from the medical branch would already have started it. Or do you really think that you are the very first person to come up with this idea - just like your turboprop fleet and your African Experience?

So let's enjoy some flaming here:

1. Then tell me what is the largest bill in the operational costs? By far, fuel is the largest bill of all.
What IATA course was it and which instructor told you that?
Oh yes there is that exception: "Airlines" who operate Gulfstream V's and F22's
And that kind of airlines as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfIAKj3Gl1E

Issued by the Iata itself: http://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_fig ... /fuel.aspx

2. In 5 years Ryanair may not be even flying to CRL anymore if at all. A hospital doesn't easily go bankrupt nor move to another country. Staff training takes time but there actually is already a big know-how in Belgium. Many doctors would happily move to support such a project and not only from within Belgium, you can expect experts from Germany, the Netherlands and France to join the party.
The Cleveland Clinic doesn't only hire from Cleveland, duh

3. There are opportunities for medical tourism if there are specialties that other hospitals can't offer or where you need combined specialists in one center like in trauma centers

3.B. For such an operation, you need a common operating language. English or French, with preference for English. Most good doctors and experts speak English. Hum but don't you need English to work at the airport anyway? :wtf:

4. Medical tourism in Europe is not small scale, they are just spread so much that you don't detect them. Skyworks is developing its Bern-Belgrade route mainly on medical traffic thanks to its excellent medical facilities at Bern.
How many people fly in into Liège to get that special treatment, whatever it is? Just ask the taxi drivers working at BRU who often have to carry patients to Liège. The movements can't be seen because cutting-edge specialties are spread all over Europe and they just happen discreetly.

5. It's done in the U.S., in Houston, in Cleveland and in other places.
There just isn't something like that yet in Europe.

Europeans like to make jokes about the American health care system, but people who are insured in America get top notch professional medical treatment like we can only dream in Europe. The hospitals are clean and doctors are very professional and under constant supervision because of fears of lawsuits.
Here in Europe, they don't have that kind of pressure and they often treat patients like pieces of meat.

Oh and I have visited the Cleveland Clinic in real life and there at least you can eat off the floor.

[sean1982]

Can we cut the crap about hospitals and talk about airports as this is an aviation forum. If you like hospitals so much, please leave us alone and go and talk on a medical forum. I'm sure your extensial knowledge with all the places you visited (even my colleagues in gosselies, tiens tiens) will help you there!

[azingrew]

"On a forum like this, expect to talk to people who have seen the things you are talking nonsense about".
Indeed ! And that goes for you
Since we are way off the original subject I have a genuine question for you Flanker: What is your job ?, what makes you such an authority in ...every single topic ? I am absolutely fascinated by the way you deliver your diatribes with such incredible confidence . Are you some big shot in the airline industry ( but you speak to the windowcleaner at CRL, so it can't be that), a nurse, ( see above), an executive at Bombardier or just a pretentious- arrogant- know - it - all- who- the -end-knows -nothing. I personally would lean towards the latter but I might be completely wrong. With you, a subject about subsidies of regional airports ends up on the floor of a Cleveland clinic ! surreal ! And this happens all the time till you have the last word.
So, what do you do in life ? Do tell us.

[B.Inventive]

@ Sean
just to remind you, in the end a pilot @ B.air makes more or less the same as a pilot @ RYR
Now the simple fact is Ryanair just pays you out the entire thing in cash, whereas B.air (partly through obligation) does not, and has to pay for a lot of extra benefits (which become rather expensive as you age!!)

In the end, it is my thought that if you compare both, they both provide pilots with a decent enough job. Unfortunately we are all fixated on that 'take home pay' at the end of the month and wether it is a part of a good 'overall' package often gets forgotten...
and true, taxes are high in Belgium. So a B.air pilot sees more money evaporate into the 'social system' which is heavily overtaxed (certainly for this group of earners in the community, they are the real milking cows...)

I can understand why people make this choice, it's a good job. But in all fairness, it simply is not fair of the EU they don't do anything about the way RYR makes money using tax money. In the end you may not pay much tax on a ticket for ryanair from CRL, but you will indirectly fund this company (wether you like it or not) through your social contributions et al...

[pressman]

Sorry you are wrong , some pilots are contractors and they are paid gross up to 13 or 14 thousand a month , as you say they have no benefits and they look after this themselves , the vast majority are paid normally and pay full tax and social insurance . My gross is significantly higher than my friends at Bru Air and my net is often more than double . Irish tax has also risen significantly is the last 3 years .

[Passenger]

Oh and I have visited the Cleveland Clinic in real life and there at least you can eat off the floor.

Indeed. And it made quite an impression to you, as you want to copy/paste it to Charleroi...
But then, I've also visited a foreign hospital! I've visited Chateauroux in 2002 with FVG! Take that!

Since we are way off the original subject I have a genuine question for you Flanker: What is your job?

Flanker, answer that question please! In what sector do you work?

[regi]

Oh and I have visited the Cleveland Clinic in real life and there at least you can eat off the floor.

Flanker, answer that question please! In what sector do you work?

He told us already: he eats off the floor.
( come on guys, have a laugh )

[B.Inventive]

Sorry you are wrong , some pilots are contractors and they are paid gross up to 13 or 14 thousand a month , as you say they have no benefits and they look after this themselves , the vast majority are paid normally and pay full tax and social insurance . My gross is significantly higher than my friends at Bru Air and my net is often more than double . Irish tax has also risen significantly is the last 3 years .

Well it's simple; as a contractor ANYONE in ANY job can make triple their salary, this is not a ryanair unicum.
If you take a b.air gross salary + the flight pay + the overtime pay + the social benefits, i'm pretty sure you get up to the same figures... (the ones YOU make at RYR, not the contractors, as this is simply no comparison)
true, you don't see all of that on you bank account but it IS being payed for you at b.air.
but we are diverging off topic, apologies.

[diminbru]

Since we are way off the original subject I have a genuine question for you Flanker: What is your job?

Flanker, answer that question please! In what sector do you work?

let's start a poll about this. What do you think Flanker's (or NCB or whatever he likes to call himself these days) job is.
My guess : a bureaucrat and I think one of the EU. They are all arrogant and obnoxious. But they seem to forget that we, the European people, pay their salary...

[Flanker]

Why would you wonder about my background? Because of the detailed analysis?
This is nothing my friends, this is hobby time-waisting.
If you're looking for a consultant, you can PM me with your credentials, the mission and your offer.

Regi, is that the best humor you can do?

[Squelsh]

This is nothing my friends, this is hobby time-waisting.

Waste of time indeed it was to read through that hot air. That pic of a hospital-floor topped it all off.

[pressman]

Sorry you are wrong , some pilots are contractors and they are paid gross up to 13 or 14 thousand a month , as you say they have no benefits and they look after this themselves , the vast majority are paid normally and pay full tax and social insurance . My gross is significantly higher than my friends at Bru Air and my net is often more than double . Irish tax has also risen significantly is the last 3 years .

Well it's simple; as a contractor ANYONE in ANY job can make triple their salary, this is not a ryanair unicum.
If you take a b.air gross salary + the flight pay + the overtime pay + the social benefits, i'm pretty sure you get up to the same figures... (the ones YOU make at RYR, not the contractors, as this is simply no comparison)
true, you don't see all of that on you bank account but it IS being payed for you at b.air.
but we are diverging off topic, apologies.

Still wrong I'm afraid , I have all the social benefits , pension etc . I still make a lot more , belgians have for some reason a strange belief that their social system is the only one in the world . probably because you have all listened to successive useless socialist governments tell you that , so now you all believe that you pay the highest taxes in europe to pay for this . Sorry to inform you , but it's the greatest rip off i have had the pleasure of witnessing , this punitive system here in belgium . You get Nothing more in belgium than you get in any other developed country . As a matter of fact ,in many cases you will end up with less .

[B.Inventive]

Still wrong I'm afraid , I have all the social benefits , pension etc . I still make a lot more , belgians have for some reason a strange belief that their social system is the only one in the world . probably because you have all listened to successive useless socialist governments tell you that , so now you all believe that you pay the highest taxes in europe to pay for this . Sorry to inform you , but it's the greatest rip off i have had the pleasure of witnessing , this punitive system here in belgium . You get Nothing more in belgium than you get in any other developed country . As a matter of fact ,in many cases you will end up with less .

Again that was not the point. The point is in the end Ryanair shelves out as much a B.air. So basically what you say is true, we are being ripped off (as I already said earlier, milk cow effect) but that is NOT b.air's choice.
I agree we are fools to accept this system as it is, however it is a democracy and the only option we have really is take it, or leave it. And I mean 'leave' literally. It wouldn't come as a surprise to me to see many colleagues leaving for less taxed realms in the months/years to come. They are very right to do so, if their situation allows it. But again, there isn't much b.air can do about that. Raising wages in Belgium is simply an impossible task.
I never claimed our social benefits are better btw, though I am pretty sure of some facts of my own.

[tolipanebas]

There isn't much b.air can do about that. Raising wages in Belgium is simply an impossible task.

Actually, they could.

Theoretically, they could set up a mechanism of fiscal delocalization of the airline to for instance Luxembourg and pay at least their flight crews there, thus giving them a higher net salary, while reducing their gross salary; it would be a big win-win for all parties so to speak, yet this idea is totally unacceptable to some shareholders of SN because they are either government controlled, or rather ardent flag-waving citizens of Belgium...

It's really hard for a medium sized airline like SN to be competitive in an environment like the common European skies if its shareholders encage it within certain self-imposed boundries like absolutely wanting to operate under the highly incompetitive Belgian fiscal system or not wanting to see it enforce massively lowered fees at its home airport, just because both that home airport or the Belgian government have a stake in the airline....

if you deliberately want to take a big hit on 2 important cost fronts (salaries and airport fees), then don't be surprised to have significantly higher operating costs!