One year on was it worth it?

[Seminole]

Mr O’Leary said, “I think that’s an impossibility because there is no goodwill in Europe towards Britain. The French and the Germans, when they have the opportunity to stick one into the British, they like nothing better.”
Talk about Pot-Kettle-Black :laugh:
O'Leary's penchante for creating fantasy scenarios to manipulate the feeble minded is almost as grand as Trump's, you would be a fool to take his words at face value.

[Gedge]

So the USA, Australia , Canada, India, Saudi Arabia and on and on, are all ECAA countries ? No? I didnt think so, and yet some scare mongerer without any link to what they claim is saying its the end of flights into the UK which has not 1 but 2 of the workds busiest airports ...talk about clutching at straws.!!!!

You do realise that USA, Australia, Canada, India, Saudia Arabia etc are not EU countries and therefore they are not ECAA countries? This clue was in the name, European Common Aviation Area (ECAA).

Lets simplify this. The UK, as an EU country, made agreements through ECAA to make flights between other ECAA countries cheaper and easier. The ECAA, collectively, has agreements (and no doubt levies) with other parts of the world. The UK, on its own, doesn't. Due to brexit, and depending upon the terms of brexit, may need to negotiate new terms with every country that flies to and through its airspace in the same way it needs new trade deals with other countries.

Of course I realise..It seems that the remoaners and scaremongers ( and the self interested like Mr O Leary ) appear to have not noticed that others can easily fly into and out of Europe, and there is no reason why we cannot join them..........

[AlanHolt]

Of course I realise..It seems that the remoaners and scaremongers ( and the self interested like Mr O Leary ) appear to have not noticed that others can easily fly into and out of Europe, and there is no reason why we cannot join them..........

Absolutely, but it needs agreement with everyone involved. If these countries can't agree in time, certain flights may stop. Thats not scaremongering, its how it is. Ryanair would be hit the most if this happened as they only fly in Europe and their operating base is situated under UK airspace. Every airline flies through other countries airspace subject to certain agreements and fees.

[Gedge]

Of course I realise..It seems that the remoaners and scaremongers ( and the self interested like Mr O Leary ) appear to have not noticed that others can easily fly into and out of Europe, and there is no reason why we cannot join them..........

Absolutely, but it needs agreement with everyone involved. If these countries can't agree in time, certain flights may stop. Thats not scaremongering, its how it is. Ryanair would be hit the most if this happened as they only fly in Europe and their operating base is situated under UK airspace. Every airline flies through other countries airspace subject to certain agreements and fees.

Aside from the fact that everyone except OLeary thinks it a straight forward thing to do, your reply doesn't reflect the scaremongering bit in the post

"O’Leary insisted that for a few months at least there will not simply be no low fare flights from the UK, but no flights at all, and he wasn’t just talking about Ryanair."

I have highlighted the truly BS part of the quote ..feel free to show me where there is any foundation (outside of his fertile imagination)for anu such ridiculous claim...

[AlanHolt]

It's difficult to say either way. We don't know what sort of brexit we will have, there isn't even a brexit plan, so nobody can say whether an airspace agreement will be in place in time. If it's not, who is going to continue flying when they don't know what the charges will be for each flight? I agree, it could all be smoothed out in time and there could be no disruption to service or increase in fares, but there is a huge amount of uncertainty. Negotiations for airspace can't really begin until the brexit terms have been agreed, because the brexit terms affect all other agreements.

[DavidS]

It's all speculative bo**ocks and wi**y waving.
Shall we all get our arsenic pills ready now?
I'm fed up with all the unfounded doom mongering from over-biased reports.
Let's just wait for the FACTS to come out (when the EU stop their own political gesturing) and then we will have something definite to discuss and, for what it;'s worth O'Leary is hardly the man you would want to base your future on.
He's Irish anyway, isn't he? Why doesn't he base himself in Dublin, Shannon or Cork......because the UK is where the money is and the money will still be there in the future.
The BBC doesn't help with it's Remain bias. While they are at it, get rid of smirky attention seeking Laura Keuhnsburg and bring in Katya Adler - a far more intelligent, unbiased and consistent reporter.

[Jak*]

I would agree with you to a certain extent David that it is all speculative and often people are talking about worse case scenarios. However that is because a year on there is still no plan. Virtually everyday there is someone else coming along from a different industry saying these are the pitfalls to us, what is going to be done about it and no one has an answer. All this uncertainty is already costing jobs and the country millions. As for the BBC being biased, at the moment they are massively under reporting the 'bad news Brexit' stories because they have been told to.
It is a great idea to talk up Brexit but at the moment any talk of a rosy future is entirely speculative because we have absolutely no idea what Brexit is going to look like. There has been much talk of the future opportunities but very little of the costs related to those opportunities. We know India wants free movement for its population in return for trade deals, is that what people voted leave for? We know that The USA wants to sell us its hormone laden beef, is that what our farmers voted leave for? Whilst we have been told there are opportunities it is unclear who it is that is queuing to buy our products and services.
I think at the moment there is a lot more speculation on the Leave side than the Remain.
Cheers Jak

[DavidS]

Equally, I agree with a lot of what you say Jak but the barrage of extreme negativity creates it's own problems and just makes things worse. We are all fed up with both side's scaremongering.
Much as I would hope that the 'plan' is there in principle but the negotiators are reasonably not blurting it out for public consumption or ruination, I have to admit to starting to think it is only a series of headings.
Without having gone into it in depth, I did think our residency/citizenship offer was pretty reasonable.
The EU just saying it's not good enough (for them) and then wanting the earth is negotiation of the worst sort.
The same will come with regard to the exit 'fee'. A touch of realism and, dare I say it, fairness from the start, would go a long way and wouldn't hurt anyone.

[Trev]

I'm definitely not a fan of Mr OLeary and, although I understand he's trying to influence decision makers to minimise damage to his business, this sort of scaremongering doesn't help anyone by further polarising opinion and pushing people into shouty mode once again.

What I do agree with though is the need for a business to plan for worse case scenario exactly as we would for any other strategic issue likely to effect your business. Although we're only 70 odd people we're having to do exactly the same as all we know is that the rule book is going to be ripped up and we don't know:
a) when the new one will be ready
b) when it is ready, will it be almost exactly the same as the old one or so different as to have massive implications for our business

I'm sure there will be positive outcomes for some (although have seen no actualpositive business outcomes yet related to our decision, anyone got one?) but we have to plan for possible worse cases and in the meantime react to the resulting outcomes from our Brexit decision so far. For our business there have been two main outcomes to date:

1) raw material price increases as a result of the crash in sterling knocking about £100k off our profit over the last 12 months with further increases of about 3% coming into force in August. Our actions as direct a response to this has been to reduce spending in a few areas -
slightly lower pay increases across the business (none for me ), hold off on recruiting unless absolutely necessary, postpone phase two of our Cap Ex plan and revise our budget for 2017/18 to take into account lower margins - less spending on people, development & kit
2) significant uncertainty for our eight EU staff (two French, one German, four Polish and one Italian) all of whom have been in the UK between 5 and 27 years and now are feeling quite unwelcome. Two are Senior Managers, all are extremely hard working and valued members of our team and would take some replacing. It has been much more difficult to put in place meaningful actions to reduce their concerns as obviously we have no more idea than anyone else what the outcome will be. So far we have started a discussion group to allow concerns to be aired, committed to covering any additional costs (visa, additional stealth 'tax', etc) within reason and supporting applications for British citizenship.

In terms of planning for other possible outcomes fair to say we're sitting on our hands a bit as not a scoobie where this will go for us. We directly export around 10% but almost all of our customers are reliant on a strong UK economy (who isn't!) and seamless flow of goods and services across a range of EU countries. 80% of our materials are imported so we are trying to work with the few remaining UK suppliers but they have all become niche specialists over the years and don't have the capability or products the industry needs let alone the costs.

Even a basic SWOT analysis throws up so many possible scenarios that it's impractical to look into cover actions for more than a handful and as a small business we're really only thinking of economic/business issues let alone the political, socio demographic and even longer term implications for political boundaries/military action, etc

Thought some might like to hear from a business actually dealing with realities we've encountered as a direct result of our decision.

Anyway, that's enough business babble, here's my personal issue: I've just about gotten past trying to figure how the f*ck Cameron thought it was a good idea to ask the least qualified people in the country (me and you!) how to run the country but I still can't square it that anyone still thinks they will notice any difference except in their pocket.

[Gedge]

I cant see why your staff are feeling unloved, unless you are putting fear in their minds ...TM has already announced her offer on residents from the EU and that position will if anything be strengthened during the negotiations..as far as can see they have guaranteed futures here if they choose...maybe if you emphasised that instead of focussing on potential negatives things night move forward better for all of us?