Talk about unecessary scaremongering. With a title like "Ryanair to Reduce Maintenance?" what are you trying to suggest? Have you any idea about every day airline operations? Unless you are flying for one of the bloated flag carriers or flying heavy metal on long haul routes you will very rarely have an 'engineer' available at every location you fly to.
All the major IT carriers from Europe fly typical two sector duties, often to small airports around the Mediterranean and they have no engineering cover down route. Every crew is capable of performing a walk around inspection and that is all that is required as long as the a/c has had its 'daily check' and there are no other defects. Even if there are, there is the MEL for reference. Should there be a problem then it is more difficult as a local engineer has to be sourced and sometimes one has to be flown in but it is, thankfully, a rare thing due to the inherent reliability of the more modern aircraft.
No need for dramatic headlines such as the one on this thread but I suppose its too late and we will probably see a 'shock horror' tabloid headline over the next few days as another bored hack pops in here to see what leads he can get. Eee bah gum, when I were a lad we had to carry our own tools to fix all the defects on turn around. These days all the youngsters expect to have an engineer on hand. Bah, humbug!
