You do not sign on "on duty" when you leave home for a 2 hr slog down the motorway, so, unless the company have rostered you, you are neither on duty when you climb on board a flight (of "your" choice ) to make the journey from where you live, to where you commence your work.
Thinking Colgan accident here, it would be remit of any of us to present ourselves for work fatigued due excessive commuting, but, it is the individuals responsibility, and cannot be counted as duty, you could have come the night before, then what ? we are going to start arguing about min rest etc ? get real.
Facilitating your travel free & ticketless, is one of the few outwardly generous things Ryanair do, and they are not by nature generous, so why ? the simple answer is that it has given them flexibility, and helped them in persuading bods to base themselves everywhere under the sun, because it was always "commutable" for free. It also provides a handy unofficial standby crew member if one FD crew goes "tech", in which case of course the Supernumary crew member would then be on duty & it would impinge on his projected further duty, but you wouldn't hear the company complaining.
For those of you not too long in aviation, you have perhaps not identified the fact that many administration/ ground based types have an unconditional loathing/jealousy (God knows why ? ) of aircrew. If the current system, which has been widely used for decades, hasn't rung any alarm bells, why are some of you coming on here ringing them loudly to gain attention ? some strange ulterior motive there ? do you actually want to restrict one of the few freedoms we benefit from ? can't figure you guys out
