The commercial managers in Ryanair have "lost the run of themselves" and like to walk and talk like MOL throwing their weight around and keeping costs well under control. This does filter down through the whole company like a bad smell. But is it really the reason that some plonker throws his career down the pan by flying a seat of the pants approach into Cork? I really dont think so somehow.
The Ryanair FLT OPS management team have learnt from our (the pilots)mistakes over the last 21 years of operation, and have developed a solid set of operating practices. They are generally able to shoulder the BS from above and when incidents like these affect the perception of the shareholders, is exactly when they remould those upper echelon types and put them back in their place. However, to remain competetive and solvent, there must be a counter balance to FLT OPS and that is them. Without them, as pilots, we would spend spend spend on new gadgets and gizmos and have titles for dozens more people who spend all their flying lives at 'meetings' in Eurocontrol or National Authorities or manufacturers and end up trying to add fat and margins to areas that already have fat and margins, that is the nature of an airline with weak control over its management. And I dont think they end up any safer necessarily.
I was looking at the Easy Jet recruitment add for a new Chief Training Captain today. It stated the following requirement of the applicant, "strategic and highly commercial, coupled with charisma and diplomacy skills necessary to drive significant organisational and cultural change."
Are we witnessing a significant shift away from traditional training and operating culture that has been soooo ingrained for the last 40 years or so? Is the "commercial" the driving factor for all these modern day positions, whereby the poor soul sells himself for a 50K bonus, a nice title, but in reality is THE fall guy when the first accident rolls in?
So to reiterate to any of you airlines (like EZ) who it looks like are about to start 'changing' things, make sure that you beef up your selection processes, psychological profiling your pilots is really important if you want to avoid incidents like Cork, Skavska, Knock and Rome.