At RYR there is a standard pre flight report time of 45 minutes. Given that crews have to be at the aircraft at STD - 25 at the latest, and allowing anything up to a 5 minute walk to the aircraft, that allows only
15 minutes to plan for a 4 sector day ! At Stansted, it is not unusual for crews to waste 5 minutes or more of this time looking for a computer terminal that works, to print off the day's flight plans and weather, and then only to find that the printer has no paper /jammed/out of toner !
Other airlines presumambly have sensible report times (ie 1 hour plus !) With some of our duty days being 11.50 or 11.55, and even one that is exactly 12 hours long, report times longer than 45 minutes would not allow Ryanair to roster these long days (to extract the maximum out of their crews), without the crew going into discretion.
I am not seeking to justify what happened, but its easy to see the pressure crews are under ......