Originally Posted by
PENKO
Let's look at it from a different perspective, why should an airline NOT facilitate its off duty crew to travel on empty seats if these employees can prove that they travel between their home and their aircraft? It is not as if these companies are handing out freebees, it's the nature of air transport that homes can be hundreds of miles away from base. So why do you object to airlines and regulators who find a way to accommodate commuters?
You miss the point entirely. No reason at all not to facilitate commuting, indeed it would be a particularly crass employer that didn't. But that is not the point being argued. Neither is envy over freebies, it had nothing to do with that either.
It is to do with Ryanair apparently gaining unfair commercial advantage by operating a typical Irish unwritten exemption to their FTL that effectively adds perhaps a day per week to the work they can get out of their crews. No one else has this advantage. It may well be that the company line is they you should declare these commuting days as duty and if you don't then you're not complying with the rules. But that would be a cynical fudge as they know crew can't afford to lose valuable duty days like that and simply won't declare them. That, if it is the case, would be a nice way for the company to weasel out of responsibility having engineered a system they knew damn well would work in a way that suits them. If that surmise is correct it would take only the most cursory audit of duty hours returns against end duty/start next duty locations and ticket sale records to reveal the scale of the scam. Crew go along with it because it is the only way to be/remain employed, and staying employed is the reason so few of the doubtless scores of their employees have followed this thread and not commented. The culture of fear is all-pervasive. Same reason they put up with no union and all the other crap they have to suffer as taxless, holidayless, pensionless, sick-payless self-accommodating nomads who have to pay for their own sim checks.
The rest of us have to abide by the law and buy staff travel tickets for a nominal sum (some get a few freebies) but all of these attract APT as a pax ticket has to. Why should just one have a system that allows them to circumvent this illegally, and to the company's massive commercial advantage?
Aviation is all about adherence to rules and blatant rule-breaking is usually regarded as unhealthy. That is why so many people are so irritated by this business. It is so blatant yet they continue to get away with it, and the IAA ain't gonna do a damn thing about it, of that you can be certain.