From Crewdock - Ryanair Pilot Intranet
Ryanair Dublin Pilots - MOL memo
To: All Ryanair Staff
From: Michael O’Leary, Chief Executive
Date: 22nd February, 2006
Re: Channel 4 Dispatches
Dear Colleague,
Our immediate response to the Channel 4 Dispatches programme last week has been focused on addressing passenger concerns and assuring them (with independent confirmation from both the IAA and the CAA) that there was no substance or evidence to any of the allegations which attempted to show that Ryanair was in breach of either our safety or security regulations.
After 5 months of undercover investigation, Dispatches wrote to us on January 12th detailing 20 separate allegations, the majority of which claimed breaches of our safety and security procedures. We provided written evidence to disprove every one of those claims in so far as they related to safety and security. Both the IAA and the CAA confirmed, on the basis of the written evidence put forward by the programme that there was no substance to these allegations.
The programme was then left with one or two statements made by people giving training courses, or prompted off guarded comments by some of our cabin crew and pilots, which were either untrue or less than complimentary. If this was all they could manage after 5 months of undercover filming, then Ryanair is in pretty good shape.
We offered the programme a live interview or an unedited pre-recorded interview to respond to these allegations, but they turned us down. They offered instead to run a statement from Ryanair at the end of the programme, but even this was censored and edited. By contrast the Dispatches programme refused to provide us with any evidence to back up their claims and finally told us that they “weren’t obliged to provide us” with any evidence.
We decided to publish all of the correspondence between Dispatches and Ryanair on our website, to allow our passengers, the wider media, analysts, investors, and each of you the opportunity to read exactly what this programme alleged to have found, as well as our responses which proved that there is no substance to their allegations.
It was inevitable when Dispatches had no evidence of any safety or security breaches, that the final programme would be heavily edited to feature unguarded comments made by our own pilots and cabin crew. This was why the final programme was more of a soap opera than a documentary. We have now investigated each of these isolated incidents and have identified the staff members who were featured making unguarded comments unbeknown to themselves to secret undercover reporters. Here is what we have done and what we propose to do:
1.All of our manuals and training courses will now be reviewed/rewritten to take out any confusing policies that related to the dual operation of the 200’s and 800’s, now that we are an all 737-800 series airline.
2.The future training courses will be closely monitored to remove any nonsense claims such as that relating to seat 1A on the 200’s, or that the security exam is anything other than “closed book”. We will however continue to encourage our instructors to interact in a friendly and informal manner which tries to put course participants at their ease.
3.We have written to all our handling agents to reinforce our policy that passport checks must be undertaken as part of the boarding procedure.
4.None of the pilots or cabin crew or instructors who featured in the programme will be subject to any disciplinary measures or any other consequences whatsoever as a result of any of the unguarded comments they made in situations where they were being secretly filmed without their permission or authority. Such comments can be heard in the canteens or coffee rooms of most companies and no one should or will suffer any consequences as a result of these comments. After all if whinging or bull****ting was a disciplinary offence, some of our Dublin pilots would have left us long ago!
The important thing to emerge from this 5 month undercover investigation is that Ryanair runs a safe, secure and customer focused airline. Our customer service does not include providing free meals and drinks, business lounges or high fares. Our customer service is about providing passengers with the lowest fares in Europe, transporting them on brand new aircraft, with the best punctuality, the fewest lost bags, the fewest cancellations, and the fewest customer complaints in Europe. This service is delivered by 3,500 professional men and women who do an outstanding job on a daily basis. We may occasionally make mistakes, but our model works. Our passengers like and support what we do, which is why our traffic has increased ten fold from four to over 40 million passengers over the past ten years. Each and everyone of you may rest assured that the safety of our passengers, our people and our aircraft is our No.1 priority. Safety and security in Ryanair will never be compromised.
I hope that together we will all learn from this experience. Ryanair is now a big airline. This was not the first and will not be the last of such “set ups” that newspapers or tv programmes will try to make. What we must all continue to do is to focus on delivering safe, secure, affordable air travel, because this is what will keep our passengers flying with Ryanair and what will allow us to provide well paid, secure jobs for all our people... yep, even the whingers God bless them...
If any of you have any concerns arising from the programme about any aspect of our safety or security procedures, then please don’t hesitate to contact either your Z manager or me directly at the Head Office in Dublin.
Please keep up the good work.
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Michael O’Leary
Ma allora vuole veramente farci tutti fessi?
