Leo, as usual to the untrained eye it is difficult to separate the spin from the truth. Your claim that the world’s pilot unions have organised a conspiracy against Ryanair, and Ryanair only, is at best paranoia. This conspiracy is your explaination for the large number of threads here and the increasing number of media articles reporting incidents at Ryanair.
In arriving at this point in time, IALPA, BALPA and their dilettante ninny REPA have lied, intentionally misled, coerced and intimidated any individual within, or component part of Ryanair they see as fair game in their comprehensively failed attempt. Their bluff has been called and they don’t like it.
Firstly the only finding in any court of anything resembling was against Ryanair when the judge found the management style to be oppressive. There is no evidence to suggest any unions or group of employees has acted as you state and in fact when Ryanair took a case against IALPA on the matter the court found the reverse was true.
They have failed to construct a persuasive narrative around the central theme that commercial pressures or management style may be responsible for a tarnished safety culture within Ryanair. They fail because their claim is utterly false.
Leo, could it be that the reason they fail is because there has been no investigation into the effects of the management style or indeed into the relationship between the Low Cost model as used by Ryanair and unusual incidents such as only Ryanair aircraft landing below minimum visibility limits?
Ryanair is an organisation of 130 aircraft, 1500 pilots, and around 1000 flights every day of the year. Those figures are, I think, well worth reflecting upon. Like all organisations in our industry, every flight we do is underwritten by an open safety culture that is very nearly obsessive. Unlike other companies though, we make no secret of the fact that when we get it wrong, as all airlines do, we turn ourselves inside out trying to find out why so as to improve future performance.
Let us reflect on those figures. You have 1500 pilots many who are not permanent Ryanair staff, many co-pilots who would be consider very low hours by other airlines, captains promoted far quicker and with lower hours than would be considered normal elsewhere, operating to off-line airfields with limited navigation aids, in high tech aircraft that require intensive training and comprehensive understanding of their systems. Add in the fact that many of your crews operate to the state limits, often clocking up 50 hours duty time a week on shift work and you can see safety might be a common theme amongst your staff and their representatives.
Particularly galling is your Chief Executive’s oft repeated mantra that pilots only work 18 hours a week. If we assume that he thoroughly believes this claim then we have to assume he is referring only to the time pilots are in the air. We can then assume that Mr O’Leary appears to think that none of the following constitutes pilots work:
* checking weather for destinations/alternates/en route airfields
* checking weathers charts for the various levels likely to be flown
* checking Notams for destinations/alternates/en route airfields
* checking the maintenance status of the aircraft
* checking the flight plan is legal and accurate
* checking the fuel load for each leg to be flown
* external pre-flight inspection of the aircraft
* checking status of tech log including fuel/oil etc on board
* ensuring required security checks have been carried out
* pre-flight cockpit set-up and programming of Navigational computers for the flight
* liasing with cabin crew/engineer/dispatcher to exchange relevant info
* getting Air Traffic clearance/checking slots
* receiving/checking and inputting load sheet data
* Ensuring all necessary systems are working and carrying out all before start checks
* any unusual events/decisions such as use of the MEL/disruptive pax/missing pax w bags etc.
Journalists are supposed to be good at the temporal assessment of seemingly disparate events
Let’s hope they can see exactly what the great leader’s 18 hour claim was trying to achieve.
As for your claim of an obsessive safety culture well I won't argue with that. However words like obsessive, oppressive etc don’t meet my idea of a proper safety culture. We should have a look at Ryanair’s performance with regard to some of the recent incidents.
Cork: event date 04 June 2006
Ryanair reported event 13 June 2006
Knock: event date 23 March 2006
Ryanair reported event 4 April 2006
This report states:
This delay is unacceptable and contrary to the requirement of Section 11 Air Navigation ( Notification and investigation of Accidents and Incidents ) Regulation, 1997, S.I. No 205 of 1997.
The AAIU site doesn’t appear to have any report on the Rome Fumicino incident which 4 months after the event the IAA claimed it didn’t have to investigate as it happened in Italy. Before that of course they investigated the
Skavska incident which presumably they felt obliged to do as it hadn’t happened in Italy.
I am willing to accept that Ryanair are indeed serious about safety ( I don’t doubt it for a second ) there is however evidence is that they don’t seem to learn from earlier mistakes. Three times they have been late reporting incidents and twice extenuating circumstances suggest a pilot reported when clearly unfit for duty. Once, it seems they had no intention of reporting the incident as suggested by the four4 month delay in doing so.
The problem would appear to be the managements inability to connect what one might call the “ temporal assessment of seemingly disparate events “. For example on the one hand we had two incidents directly linked to pilots who IMHO should not have flown, on the other hand a memo appeared on this site as follows:
RYANAIR
THE LOW FARES AIRLINE
Corporate Head Office Dublin Airport
County Dublin
Ireland
Over the past year over 10,000 days have been lost through absenteeism in RYANAIR; which equates to 7 un-crewed aircraft every day, all year around!!!
Your attendance record shows that you have been absent from work on [ 3..4.. etc.] occasions during the last 12 months. This high frequency of absence cannot be sustained, as other people within your area have to pick up additional work in your absence.
All absences in the future will be closely monitored and I need to see a dramatic and sustained improvement in your attendance in the months ahead.
Please confirm receipt of this letter and measures you will take to eliminate further absence from work. If you have any queries on the above please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours sincerely,