Ryanair/Channel 4 dispatches Programme
 

Press release due on www.ryanair.com this afternoon concerning an upcoming Channel 4 investigation into the airline. Programme alledged to use covert footage including conversations between crew members which bring the airlines safety into question.

Ryanair's request to reply to the allegations via an unedited interview have been denied by the tv station. Two undercover journalists worked for Ryanair in late 2005 in order to compile the story.

Here is the offical Ryanair response:
Some ten letters posted on their website so here is the link:
http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/inpag...ner=DISPATCHES

when can we see this program

Not surprised that something like this has finally happened. - there is no smoke without fire though. I suspect that there will be elements of fact and fiction in the show. Either way publishing these letters will do only one thing and that is make sure that many more people will watch the program than might have done without all the extra publicity. I would think Dispatches will be delighted.
I also wonder what it would actually take to convince a bully like MOL that there might be something wrong with his airline and the issues of fatigue that the program appears to be about raise are very much part of the industry today. People should be aware that those at the pointy end are often shattered and fatigued - most airlines seem to see legal limits as targets rather than guidelines but I am sure that debate has been had somewhere else before on pprune.

Due to shown Monday February 13 at 8pm on Channel4 Television (UK).
Will be interesting to see if it is pulled before that.

Let the nitpicking begin! :}

Whilst no love is lost between the airline pilot fraternity and the Channel 4 Dispatches program there is definitely a whiff of schadenfreude with this one. Oh what a pleasure it will be to watch the Ryanair management squirm under the scrutiny of this programme.

In the correspondence published on the Ryanair website we can see the masters of spin within the Ryanair hierarchy spouting their nonsensical rubbish in a feeble attempt to smother the negative publicity that is heading their way like a hurricane approaching a low lying (pun intended) beachfront community. They've been caught with their pants down and are attempting to get their audience to look away rather than pull their pants up. How predictable! :}

The last letter from FR cracks me up............. where do they get an average of 18hrs a week from ????

Having read the initial correspondence between the maker of the program and Michael O'Leary, I hate to say it but it looks like it the program has come up with just about nothing of any note or substance. Is there anything in those 20 points that raises one pilot's eyebrow? Not mine chaps. Load of tosh. And I have to say, that is one robust response from MOL.

Just stand back and forget it's Ryanair under the spotlight. If this garbage was raised against another airline, we would all call it what it is: sh!te.

I said it before elsewhere, this is likely to be one big waste of air time.

The channel 4 web site claims "inadequate safety and security checks, dirty planes, exhausted cabin crew"

Having flown with Ryan Air asveral times over the past 5 years I can't say I've noticed the above. The pax security checks seem to be similar to the other airlines I've flown with, the planes have never appeared dirty (on the contrary they have been very clean and tidy). If the cabin crew are "exhausted" they seem to do a good job of hiding it.

It's not just that, the program can be edited with shots of crashed planes, menacing music and Danger! in red letters without actually making a verbal point.

Without taking sides, I do think that MOL (or whoever) should have a right of reply.

Oh mol is one to cry HUMAN RIGHTS.What about the rights of his workers.Save me the bleeding heart.
With all those letters,no wonder leo is away a lot at the moment.

simple maths:
900 hrs
---------- = 18 hrs/week... innit? Not?
50 weeks
OK so that's 2 weeks shy of a year.
:p

TDL
 

One must assume with YOUR maths that they dont have leave/training/sims etc........

It's called sarcasm.
I am also aware that 900 hrs (block) flying time does not equal 900 hrs worked...
:rolleyes:

Is there any way to watch the programm outside the UK, e.g. through the internet?

Is there any way someone can record it and make it available for all of us?

Having read the correspondence, I'm beginning to suspect that while C4/Dispatches may have some points, they've had to try and puff a lot of it up. If it was any other airline other than FR, I don't think this program would have even been comissioned. I'll reserve judgement until after the screening, but I would have thought more of C4 and Dispatches who normally put out some good programming.

EI-CFC
You don't watch a lot of C4 mate, do you! :suspect:

While I am no raving fan of RyanAir/ MoL, poor customer service etc, I doubt that this particular dispatches 'investigation' will be any more enlightening than previous ones.

Gutter Journalism at its best.

All it will serve is to further hammer home the mantra "that RYR is Europe’s no fares airline" or whatever....

I do wonder will they roll out the three Muppets from Embrey riddle who were used on the BA program to demonstrate the effects of Alcohol on flight crew - a so called 727 crew who didn't appear to be able to fly a standard profile sober, had no idea of location of switching etc, and who were all obviously students at the college whom C4 put forward as an experienced and qualified flight crew. :mad: :mad:

Anyone know if there will be something entertaining on the other sides? Live footage of some paint drying perhaps?

Sounds exactly the like the hatchet job they did on BA. Very litte in the way of real evidence and fifty minutes of filler in a poorly produced program. I'm amazed you think Dispatches put out some good programs. If this is the standard of the two programs on a subject we understand think what guff they must be producing on subjects we know nothing about! Lazy, sensationalist TV from people who've set out to make a program and don't care if the facts don't support it.

Maybe I've just been lucky with the ones I have watched over the years !!!!!! :D :D :D (granted the more recent ones I haven't seen many of - perhaps they've begun to deteriorate in quality since then!)

The big question...
 

This is shaping up to be a great case study on crisis communications.

From where I sit it looks like RyanAir are getting and taking good advice. I doubt this will go legal, C4 would love to screen "the programme they tried to ban".

However if they do show it, which after the promotional effort I expect they will, and fail to provide some balance then in a month or two we will see some "Equal promenance" coverage for RyanAir.

The big question, who has bought the ad breaks?
A low cost rival?

A "full service" rival?
A train operator?

Don't think I am doing anything wrong but I cannot get the letters on the Ryan Air website to open. Has anyone else had the same problem? have the letters been withdrawn?
:confused:

Work fine for me.

Have you got Adobe Acrobat Reader installed?

www.adobe.com

Let them chickens come home to roost
 

Yes of course C4's investigation will not produce any surprises for those of us who know this airline all too well. Nor should we expect a high standard of journalistic excellence. And, yes indeed, some of the allegations are fairly lame and irrelevant giving MOL (and no doubt LHC in due course, YAWN....) easy rebuttals while ignoring the really meaty stuff. But, there are pearls among the swine and at last the issue of pilot fatigue is getting an outing. Nice of Michael to open up his internal studies on that one;) Interesting that he had it readily available. (Handy for the AAIU when THAT evil day dawns....) Like a naughty child covering his eyes when caught out, it is symptomatic of a guilty conscience, me thinks. Even if dispatches seem to have missed the most blatant abuses of the FTL scheme, it has now entered the public domain and the great unwashed will gradually absorb the fact that a tired pilot may kill them. I don't think MOL's aggressive, overly legalistic and heavy-handed response to C4 will impress the public.

Can someone please save a copy of the Ryanair correspondence before it is pulled? Because it will be.

From my humble perspective, Ryanair has written those letters in a particular manner so as to be able to use them to obtain an injunction against the TV station, or as evidence for a defamation lawsuit later.

The letters provided by Ryanair are full of sweet reason, and give the impression that Ryanair is a workers paradise. The trouble is that no matter what the facts are according to Mr. O'Leary it is the corporate culture that is the real issue.

It is perfectly possible to have a wonderful operating manual and rules, but if the corporate culture does not support them they are dead letters.

Ho Hum, we are going to see a legal ****fight where both Ryanair and the program will win from all the free publicity.

CODSWOLLOP I SAY!!
 

I've seen the advert, i've read the letters on the Ryanair website and to cut a long story short i think its a bunch of old CODSWOLLOP!!

Any excuse to get a story and make money!!

As for pilots being over worked erhh where did they get that!! My other half is a pilot and it feels like hes never at work!!

i've just found this article from the Belfast telegraph

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...p?story=678622

Anyone note the striking similarities between the style of prose in MOL's letters to the C4 producers and Leo Hairy Camels posts on this website?

Also, very noticeable is the Ryanair management philosophy that if you repeat a mistruth often enough the great unwashed public will start to believe it is true. It is so obvious to us in the business that by his repeated claims of pilots only flying to the maximum of 100 hours in 28 days equates to only 25 hours a week is designed to put across the impression that Ryanair pilots are mollycoddled and hardly work at all. It surely is a double edged sword in that he would like the public to believe that pilots hardly work at all but at the same time he insults his pilot workforce by trying to make out that they are underworked, lazy and inefficient.

Also, in the letters published is one comparing "average salaries" between Ryanair, easyJet, BA and Lufthansa. Anyone notice the blatant untruths in that one? In very small print at the bottom it mentions "excluding social, welfare and pension". Well, considering that Ryanairs pay is it and they don't include any "social, welfare or pension", they are obviously lying blatantly in their claims of being the best paying airline. Also, by claiming an "average" salary the figures mean nothing without knowing the range of numbers between the highest and the lowest, never mind how many of each.

The blatant audacity to claim that the cabin crew have to pay for the duration of their employment for their uniforms at £25 a month is just one more example of the thieving bar stewards utterly contemptible attitude towards their employees. I mean, c'mon, are you claiming that your cabin crew go through £300 worth of uniform a year? Only slime like Leo and his ilk could admit that they increase their companies profitability by hacking away at their employees benefits and wages.

So, whilst C4 and Dispatches are no friends of airline pilots, we do see here an attempt to put one over on Leo Hairy Camel and his miserable band of bullies. It is time that the public got to see a bit of what has been exposed on here for years, that Ryanair are one of the most profitable airlines because in reality they are one of the lowest paying airlines when you add up all the benefits and allowances when comparing them to any other airline. There is a management culture that relies on bullying, insults and threats that all cause financial pain to the employee should they so much as question some of their practices.

Well I should hope so. Ryanair have been dealing with a sometimes hostile media for years and know exactly how they are going to play it. I'm sure they've been expecting something like this for a while!

I've been in a version of what Michael O'Leary is going through, when an airline I was working for was subject to 30 minutes "trial by television" - basically, a load of disgruntled ex-employees, venting their spleen with a series of provably wrong claims that a gutter media - who had clearly committed to filling 30 minutes of airtime before they had done any research - were happy to lap up.

I hate to say it, but this is another symptom of the dreadfully low standards of journalism that we see in the UK. It is but a small step from "terror jet seconds from disaster over orphanage" to "sit in the front row of a 737 and you will die in the event of an accident". From a journalist's point of view, both grab the reader's/viewer's attention, and therefore "make good television".

If a journalist wanted to make a name for themselves, what better way than to feed on any public uneasiness about flying (better still, to generate some) and get as public a figure and as public a company as Michael O'Leary and Ryanair pilloried "in the public interest"?

I wish Michael O'Leary all the luck in the world with this, and I hope he sues them until their teeth fall out.

I'm with arewenearlythereyet? on this. Anything in the Ryanair materials that I can independently check is a distortion or a manipulation of the facts or a play on words. This does not make C4 right, but it suggests that Ryanair have decided on a "bad news management" strategy which has little to do with the merits of what C4 have to say. Also, it is a clever little stategem to involve the various Aviation/Safety authorities by proxy! (copying them letters, citing their approval of various things, etc).

For me, all that C4 seems to have uncovered is the basic stuff familiar to any FR employee - but as somebody above pointed out, this is not familiar to many people and the programme cannot really do any harm.

What I do know a litle about, namely the demotion of the Ryanair captain in highly disputed circumstances, is absolutely mis-represented in the correspondence. However, we have yet to hear a word from the IAA about this and clearly Ryanair believe that the IAA will go along with their interpretation of events. History suggests that the IAA will avoid this matter like the proverbial plague - but that does not make Ryanair right. What Ryanair pilot of any length of service doubts what took place? (Sorry Leo but you don't qualify as a real line pilot).

TwinAisle - you consider yourself the "Scourge of Bad Airline Management"! AND "wish Michael O'Leary all the luck in the world with this.... ". What part of "Bad Airline Management" do you specialise in scourging !?!?

Which bits?

The bits that don't make any money...! :rolleyes:

OK, interesting answer. What if the bits that DO make money have eroded the safety margin to the point of being unsafe?? Or even if industry professionals have a suspicion that this may be so? AND if there's a lack of confidence in the regulating Aviation Authority to grasp the nettle?

Perhaps I should say at this point that I do not, nor have I ever, worked at Ryanair, so I shall leave Camel Killer's question to be answered by those who have or do. Suffice it to say, if there was something wrong at ANY airline, wouldn't the aviation authorities be better judges than "tabloid style" journalists?

My only real point on this thread was that I hate to see trial by television. Whether Ryanair and/or Michael O'Leary have a case to answer wasn't my point.

In an ideal world, yes, of course. They have the industry knowledge and experience. But, when there IS "something wrong" and the aviation authority's regulatory oversight has failed to put it right, then maybe "trial by television" is the least bad option. If only to alert the public that all's not well, thus leading to a wake up call to the Authority.
They have, and it's the failure of the IAA to deal effectively with the case that has led to trial by television. With all the warts and all sensationalist approach that no doubt we will see on Monday.

I've had a quick read through...have I missed something?

How the bloody blue blazes did a camera crew, despite a camera being small enough to be worn in the lapel, get their equipment through security?

Did they get some sort of permission?

And the $64,000 question. Was it running during a critical stage of flight?

I'm with twinaisle on this one.

Ryanair or not, this is gutter journalism at it's absolute lowest and is completely beyond contempt. Whichever 'aviation expert' controbuted to this wants stringing up as well.

Whatever you think about Ryanair, this could easily be done to ANY airline in this country if it was edited cleverly enough. I know that some people on these boards rate Ryanair as the lowest of the low but at the end of the day people don't have to work for them. There are plenty of other airlines out there recruiting at the minute. I have some good friends at Ryanair who are bloody good pilots and are perfectly happy.

Can anyone who flies for a loco/no frills carrier honestly say that they are not working 850-900hrs a year? I know I can't...and what's more, if this is the absolute hardest I have to work in my career then I can't complain.

I don't really have an opinion one way or the other on MOL or Ryanair but I hope he takes 'Dispatches' to the cleaners. It's patenly grasping at straws filling an uneducated public's mind with utter rubbish. There may well be some issues at Ryanair (although the 'evidence' presented by the TV company does not hint at any) but this kind of rubbish is doing nothing to air them in the correct way.

Looserivets,

...and how could CC supposedly carrying out their duties possibly be filiming. The production company's assertions on this score don't really cut the mustard in my opinion.

TS6

Am I missing something here? Doesn't anyone find it extraordinary that Ryanair publishes private letters to and from Channel 4 on their website? Letters that say 'Strictly Private and Confidential' on them? :hmm:

If some of you think this programme can't do Ryanair any harm then you are wrong. Hearsy and inuendo are not things the CAA or IAA can act on, video evidence is. Furthermore this programme is high profile to the traveling public who will judge it as they see it, and it doesn't look good for Ryanair.

All this talk of "Gutter Journalism" etc etc etc

Perhaps its best to actually WATCH the program first before passing judgement?

Just a suggestion!

The problem with this sort of program is that while we can see it from one angle, the travelling public have no idea what is really a problem and what is just sensationalism dressed up as fact.

This could be damaging to RYR and all the damage control they try will only be of limited value, since if it's on the telly its got to be true....

We all know that there are issues at RYR, but it would be nice if when any company is dragged through the mud, it's done correctly. If a company starts hurting, who are the ones who have to pay for it?

I didn't read anything in the letter on the RYR website that surprised or even concerned me, it all seems to be inuenndo and hearsay, though we'll have to wait for the program to give a real opinion on it.

I'm no great fan of Ryanair, and MOL in particular, but for those who are rubbing their little hands in undisguised glee over the programme there may just be one point you wish to bear in mind.

To Joe Public, Ryanair is virtually indistinguishable from any other airline, so if Dispatches do a hatchet job on FR, then they do a hatchet job on us all. Any doubts raised about the safety of lo-co travel, or crew competence, will be applied across the board (and not just in lo-co). After all, one a/c or airline is pretty much the same as any other a/c or airline to the uninitiated.

Don't think so? Well, how many times have you seen the lobotomised drooling morons come tumbling out the terminal and wander off to the a/c of their choice, despite the fact the one right in front of them has the airline logo plastered down the side in 6 foot letters and the other one hasn't. It happens with monotonous regularity.