Ian good afternoon,
look at what Danny said in "Ryanair Approaches"
"What some of you are misunderstanding is the difference between the flight operations department and the SOP's that are there for safety reasons and the the fact that some pilots, a tiny fraction of the whole Ryanair pilot workforce, have breached those SOP's and caused incidents that have been highlighted.
What needs to be understood are the reasons that those pilots ignored those safety related SOP's. I have no doubt it is not because there is a lack of safety culture within Ryanairs Flight Ops department. It is highly probably that there is an underlying link between the corporate management style which was recently lambasted by an Irish high court judge and the repercussions that pilots could face without independent representation.
As for the lack of a connection between 25 minute turn-arounds and rushed approaches, I think the emphasis is more on the rush to keep to the schedule rather than just the turn-around itself. What are the pressures on the commanders if there is an inherent atmosphere of intimidation or bullying from the corporate management for delays that cannot be satisfactorily explained or is there a leak of the bullying management style over into the flight ops department?"
Also what Captainpaddy says in the same topic;
"I couldn't agree more. It is preprogrammed in just about every pilots brain to operate safely (Hence the fact that people get so heated over discussions like these). Flight Ops in any company will have the same lean. It is entirely inappropriate to point the finger of blame at RYR's pilots or individual Ops departments.
What must be recognised is that the company culture is moving us all back in time. People must realise that corporate decisions which seem miles removed from day to day operations can have the most discreet yet signifcant effects on how people perform their tasks. RYR management do not appear to be willing or perhaps even capable of accepting that a dictatorial management style, while it will keep shareholders very happy for a while, can push the whole operation closer and closer to the edge.
As I said in another forum on a similar topic: If you stretch 50 pieces of metal to their theoretical limits, some will be fine, some will be at breaking point and some will have broken already. In the past, companies have used margins in all areas of their operations to maintain a high level of safety. The closer you get to the limits, the smaller your margins, the closer you are to disaster.
A boss that says his airline can withstand 2 hull losses, obviously has looked at safety as nothing more than a financial tool. He has seen that he can reduce the margin in order to save money and increase profits while calculating that the increased risk is still financially and economically manageable. It is a backwards trend. Not modern, forward thinking management."
I would also read this thread, "Ireland: Ryanair Fears €20m Pilot Hit"
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=258282
That is what many people see as the problems in Ryanair!
