Let's be absolutely clear about this. No matter what the truth of the matter, the position of Flight is more than reasonable.
Do you really think so, GGV? I don't.
there are grounds for being very suspicious that all is not well with safety management in Ryanair. An appropriate investigation of the many, many signs and clues of dysfunction in Ryanair is long overdue.
Lets all think about that for a moment.
The current issue (6-12 February, 2007) of Flight International has on its cover the rather immodest headline “Ryanair back under safety spotlight” in big red letters on the front cover. Flick over to page three, and there under the title “The wrong approach” is a shabby little piece written by David Learmont (one grows accustomed to his ‘style’ over the years) asserting that “questions need to be asked” and pointing an accusatory finger, not for the first time, at the Irish Aviation Authority. What slovenly journalism!
We’re not finished yet, though. Another flick takes us to the very next page where the bard of Quadrant House goes on about a day in April of last year where some company aircraft were allegedly involved in landing events involving unusually increased RVR minima due to runway lighting degradation. Three flicks more and we land on page 11 and the lurid headline “Ryanair approaches probed again”. This time we’re treated to a pictorial extravaganza of the Cork incident. To finish off this week’s ‘balanced’ journalistic foray into Ryanair, we’re told that the Cork incident is one of four since July 2005 in a sidebar entitled “Unstablised arrivals in the spotlight”.
That makes one highly subjective and intentionally provocative headline, and four separate articles negatively dedicated to Ryanair in one issue. Embrace for a moment that the recent Supreme Court case was widely expected to go the way of IALPA, and this week’s issue would surely have been a slam-dunk fiesta of anti-Ryanair sentiment. Coincidental timing? Really? Headline and four articles in one issue? Hmmmmm.
As is stands, it is a monument to unfair and misrepresentative journalism from a man who is supposed to know much better. Learmont has had unprecedented access to Ryanair, a fact he conveniently neglects to mention. He has been invited as a guest to the very heart of the operation, poked his head under ever skirt, looked under every rug, and is even to attend our final Flight Safety Roadshow in Liverpool later this month, and this is the sort of tawdry, misleading hack journalism that results. Other boardrooms beware!
It is, of course, perfectly fair and reasonable to closely examine these events. It is appropriate to view them within the context of a rapidly expanding airline involved in the LoCo business operating around 1000 flights every day. That’s a lot of flights since July 2005, Mr. Learmont, and you’re writing about four approach events. Four out of many hundreds of thousands!
Is it reasonable to consider 4 flights out of many hundreds of thousands as being suggestive of some as yet unprobed human factors aspect of the low cost operation that is worthy of further examination? Perhaps. Is it reasonable to suggest the IAA is the sole arbitrator of such an enquiry? No. Is it reasonable to conclude, as Learmont has evidently done,
twice, that we at Ryanair are hiding a flawed, Dickensian operation behind the skirts of a compliant regulator? Certainly not! It is a vulgar and offensive notion unbefitting a publication with the reputation of Flight International.
Not surprisingly, Learmont is not alone, though. The owner of this website has recently posed the question:-
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
Mr. Fine, there
IS no such atmosphere. Can it be that even you, to whom we here all owe so much, have permitted your cognitive skills to be bruised by such blatant union ballyhoo? Intimidation and bullying, if they exist at all, are to be found at the hands of IALPA and their press-gang recruiting methods. What would you say, I wonder, about the unsavoury spectacle of new entry cadets working through their line training, and new DEC’s alike, being lassoed, brainwashed and told to sign on the dotted line "or else" without so much as five minutes experience of the company to formulate their own points of view?
In the light of such slovenly reporting and decidedly tabloid instincts as Flight International has displayed this week, is there any wonder?