Ryanair worries the hell.......
Avoiding some of the pitfalls created by earlier contributors can I just go back to the beginning and tell you why Ryanair do concern me. My background (45 years) is entirely aviation, military and commercial from ground servicing to flight engineering and airline management of training. Now I look at other airlines operations purely from a passenger point of view - and it is that which concerns me. An earlier correspondent mentioned the lack of de-icing and walk round checks during a QTR. Yes - this happens and is an inevitable consequence of commercial pressures. The Captain makes the decision and that is it. But it is the cabin crew that mostly concern me.
I recently travelled on a Ryanair -800 and watched with professional interest as the cabin crew "performed" their demonstrations. I don't think that I have ever seen a better example of a c/c being utterly bored with their lot. The demonstration was out of synch with the audio and was utterly slapdash. When the c/c attempted to point out the emergency exits I took out of the seat pocket, the safety card only to find that it describing the exits on a -200 series. Although I could see from looking out of the window that it was an -800, I asked one of the girls if she could confirm that the aircraft that we were traveling on was indeed an -800 series. She looked at me as though I had just landed from another planet and walked away.
I did some research (just to make sure about the exits) and indeed did find that the position of the exits on the -800 series were diferent to the -200. I also came across the incident at Stansted where the cabin crew had attempted to push the pax out of an exit close to a burning engine. Fortunately the fire crew had resisted this attempt. But it did confirm my views about the standard of cabin crew training.
I e-mailed the IAA and they confirmed that the situation I described was lacking in professional competence and they would investigate. Subsequently I took a call from the IAA officer responsible, who told me that (surprise, surprise) they had since checked all other aircraft belonging and all the safety cards were correct for the type of aircraft. "As you know" he said, "this sort of incident goes through airlines at the speed of light so......" He left the rest of sentence hanging in mid air. I also got the impression - from the rest of the conversation - that RyanAir are subject to more checks from both the CAA and IAA than is perhaps normal and certainly that I had come across before retirement.
I have no criticism of the flying side of RyanAir and commend their time keeping BUT the cabin crew are a different matter. Hopefully my comments to the IAA will have prompted a "behind the scenes" action plan. I will not willingly travel with RyanAir again so may never see any improvement.