Striking pilots
want salaries of
up to £350,000,
claims Ryanair
By Robert Mendick Chief RepoRteR
and Jamie Johnson
STRIKING Ryanair pilots are demand-
ing salaries of up to £350,000 a year,
according to a secret memo drawn up
by the airline and seen by The Daily Tel-
egraph.
With the pilots’ strike due to enter its
second day today, the budget airline ac-
cused union officials of making “exces-
sive and unexplained demands for pay
increases”.
The British Airline Pilots Association
(Balpa), the pilots union, in turn dis-
missed Ryanair’s claims as “drivel”
amid increasing hostilities and little
sign an agreement could be reached.
The strike had threatened to wreck
the bank holiday weekend for tens of
thousands of holidaymakers, but last
night, Ryanair drafted in replacement
pilots leading to only a few delayed
flights.
According to the secret memo drawn
up by Ryanair, pilots stood to gain ef-
fective pay rises of between 62 per cent
and 121 per cent had the airline caved in
to the union’s full demands.
Ryanair looked at salaries of five pi-
lots. It said the union was demanding
that the basic salary of a senior captain
with 15 years’ experience be increased
from £77,929 to £166,311. With a series
of extra payments that include duty pay
- which is additional pay for non-flight
hours which is worth, according to Ry-
anair, £55,113 – increased pension pay-
ments, and other additional payments
for training and other benefits, that
would take a senior captain’s salary to
£349,922. Captains with five years’ ex-
perience would see their basic pay rise
to £117,385 from a basic of about
£72,000 with the total package worth
as much as £270,000.
A Ryanair spokesman said: “Highly
paid pilots, earning six figure salaries,
have a duty to our customers and their
families to avoid strikes disruptions to
passengers, especially when agreed
dispute resolution processes have not
yet been used or exhausted.”
Pilots with Balpa have complained
that they lose out on basic rights such
as better pensions and holiday pay. Un-
der the the union’s proposals, accord-
ing to Ryanair’s internal memos,
holiday pay and pension payments
would both increase dramatically.
Brian Strutton, the union’s general
secretary, said: “Ryanair’s figures are
designed to exaggerate the cost of Bal-
pa’s claim and we dispute them in full- for a start, the union has not de-
manded a specific percentage increase
in pay. The public know enough about
Ryanair to take their spin with a mas-
sive heap of salt.”
The Telegraph was told by the union
that its demands included “issues such
as maternity pay, pensions, loss of li-
cence cover – all of which is standard in
other airlines”.
Wife must name lover who fathered her son
By Jessica Carpani
A WOMAN must tell her son who his
biological father is after having an
affair, the High Court has ruled.
She was sued by her husband after
he discovered the child was not his son.
The man originally sued for “every
penny” he spent on the eight-year-old
he believed to be his son, but following
a hearing in June decided he would
continue his role as a father to the boy
and subsequently no longer sought
recompensation.
But the man and woman argued over
whether the boy should be told his real
father’s identity. The husband said he
should be told while his estranged wife
wanted it kept from him. In court, Mr
Justice Cohen ruled that the boy should
be informed, noting that “too many
people knew” for it to remain secret.
But the judge added that the boy
should not be told until the “time wasright” and that a social worker would
decide. He made it clear it would be up
to the child to decide if and when he
wanted to know the name, at which
point the husband would also be told.
But, the husband would not be al-
lowed to publicise the man’s identity.
The alleged biological father has de-
nied he fathered the child. The judge
outlined his decision at the Family Divi-
sion of the High Court in London, not-
ing the woman was “full of remorse”.Trafalgar Square lions could give you sepsis
By Sarah Knapton SCienCe editoRRUBBING statues for luck puts people
at risk of developing sepsis and con-
junctivitis, the first study of bacteria on
monuments has shown.
Experts swabbed 24 statues in 13
European cities including the lions in
London’s Trafalgar Square and the Pad-
dington Bear bronze at Paddington sta-
tion and found huge levels of bacteria.
Some of the bacteria detected, suchas Staphylococcus, can lead to infec-
tions including sepsis, conjunctivitis,
cystitis and endocarditis.
The team also discovered Pseu-
domonas, which may cause folliculitis
and ear canal infections.
A statue of Sherlock Holmes, near
Baker Street in west London, the feet of
which are regularly touched by tour-
ists, had a large presence of Staphylo-
coccus. The Trafalgar Square lions also
carried bacteria that are usually onlyfound on people’s shoes, suggesting
people had been climbing on them.
The research showed that the Oscar
Wilde statue at Charing Cross in Lon-
don had the highest bacterial diversity
of all the monuments tested.
Atlas Biomed, a DNA and gut micro-
biome screening company, which car-
ried out the survey, said people with
weaker immune systems should wash
their hands immediately after coming
into contact with a monument.Early birds Thousands of music fans set up camp yesterday at Reading Festival in preparation for the three-day event which
starts today. Some even arrived at the site on Wednesday, lured by the prospect of sunny weather. About 90,000 people are
expected on each day of the festival, which is headlined by Foo Fighters, Post Malone, Twenty One Pilots and The 1975.VAGNER VIDALNews
The Daily Telegraph Friday 23 August 2019 *** 13
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