Ryanair authority problems
 

As reported by the German newspaper Die Welt among others, Ryanair seems to be under authority investigation for having declared a MTOW of 66.990 kg as basis for the calculation of air navigation and landing fees but having systematically exceeded this. Every flight examined by the authority has had an actual takeoff weight above this value, but equal to or below the Boeing-issued maximum TOW of 74.990kg.

It is expected that within Germany alone, the savings amount to around 370.000 Eur. a month. The immediate future seems to hold a sizeable bill for Ryanair.

But it also says that if it turns out to have been systematic and widespread, Eurocontrol may be owed something like 50 mil. Stay tuned.

It's not Ryanair’s fault - blame the passengers who cheat with their 10Kg allowance.

Up to 8 tonnes per flight is rather more than could be accounted for by extra carry-on.

Nonsense: charges are based on declared MTOW , not actual T/O weight .

The issue seems to be ( if I understood the article correctly) between FR which declared all its aircraft to have a MTOW of 66,9 Tons , and the manufacturer data which says MTOW 75 Tons.
What is on the actual Irish registry certificates would be interesting to know.
If the Irish allowed 66.9 and someone can prove flights were systematically made well above that figure, the problems for FR and Irish CAA will be far more complex than some money fines about route/landing charges......

If this is true, it's either fraud (including conspiracy to defraud) or corporate negligence. One is a criminal act, the other should be punished by the stock market - when the punitive fines kick in. Also, their auditors should be in a for an appropriate fine as well. Failing to spot an obvious infringement of the rules should also be punished.

When we exceed our RTOW (declared maximum) my crowd offload passengers - we can probably imagine what the thieving pikey's attitude to that would be. Let's have a level playing field shall we.

Unlike 'the old days' when a change in declared MTOW required days of notice and hand delivered parchment to the authority, I understand from a recent discussion here that it can now be 'instant'. What might have happened here is that RY 'forgot' to notify the 'exceedance' in whichever place one does. If true, whether that was through incompetence or deception remains to be decided but may well have handed the authorities a nice large hammer. Not a good move.

Yes could you see the Irish CAA doing anything about it, or being allowed to do anything.
Apart from the bootleggers and drug dealers, it is the only company in Ireland making any money.

Are the political elite going to do anything about the golden goose?

Nah...

Oh dear Piltdown Man, you make a statement such as the one in your last paragraph and will no doubt squeal like a stuck pig when Ryanair want your name and address from PPRuNe so they can ask you to retract and apologise.

Good one! The German press are having a field day over Ryanair's extremely strict baggage weight checks and their 'inability' to accurately determine their own TOW.

Ryanair soll sich Millionen Euro an Gebühren erschummelt haben - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Actually, the issue seems to be a discrepancy between the MTOW declared by Ryanair and what is actually entered for the same airframe into the Irish registry. As the German DFS does not have direct access to the Irish registry they actually had to perform some ramp checks to collect the data and see if there was any discrepancy.
Actual take-off weight is of course irrelevant as far as ATC fees are concerned. According to the article actual MTOW was never exceeded.

If this is indeed the case, then Ryanair is not only guilty of fraud, but also of deliberately operating outside the authorised performance enveloppe, which is reason to suspend the Ryanair AOC.

If Germany has any balls, they will forbid FR wntry into their airspace until this issue has been fully cleared up:E
Airlines have been banned for less serious issues. Eg. onur air...

Ps. sue me Ryanair for telling my opinion about your alleged practices that put our whole industry to shame. PLEASE! I will have so much fun in court, and so will the media, I can guarantee that:E

The wheel appears to be a turnin'. What goes up must come down and all that.

It's my belief that history is a wheel. "Inconsistency is my very essence" -says the wheel- "Rise up on my spokes if you like, but don't complain when you are cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it is also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away" Boethius, 6th Century Philosopher

Mate of mine had the misfortune to wind up working for a bunch of bucket & spade cowboys many years ago. He told me , at the time, that the company declared a few aircraft to have a MTOW well below Manufacturer's figure. He was told by the CP, no less, that this was to avoid Air Traffic charges. However, the aircraft were regularly flown above the "declared" MTOW but never , of course, above the Certified Manufacturers MTOW. Cowboys loved topping up the difference in fuel & making it easy to go long distances without being charged for the heavier weight. But that was a long time ago when the Cranwell twerps were in charge & thought that there was still a war on ! Line blokes, grateful for a job, cheered them on. My mate left. He told the CP that there were two things he would never do; 1. Break the Law. 2. Endanger the lives of innocent pax. He felt that he was being asked to do both on a regular basis.

I don't know if you were referring directly to my summary of the article but if that is the case you have completely misunderstood what I said. According to the DFS, Ryanair never exceeded the certification MTOW but allegedly declared an MTOW which was lower than the actual value (from the aircraft's papers), in order to pay less than was actually due. Flight safety was never endangered.

As Tony Soprano would say.." Why should you doo dat" (bronx accent please)!

Connecting a few of the dots here, would it not be the best idea to have weighbridges for aircraft in taxiways in order to (a) give the takeoff weight to the captain for thrust settings (b) charge the airline a tariff for TOW, and (c) give a checksum for any irregularities between the expected and actual weights that could point to something awry (such as ice on the wings?)

If they're charging based on takeoff weight and Ryanair saved millions, then the cost of a weighbridge pales into insignificance just on that saving alone, let alone the savings in lives and money from incidents based on false TOW.

Ryn operates with variable MTOW: 66,990; 69,990 and 74,990: you just need to declare which one you use prior to operate the flight. Most of the time the ATOW is well below 66,990 because the commpany is operating short flights, with almost no bags in the hold and little fuel tankering.
So there is no massive fraud on en-route fees; maybe few flights had discrepancies due maybe to omission or little coordination between crew and dispatcher or else. but there is no chance a fraud system has been implemented as most of the flights have ATOW around 62 to 64T so no need to fraud!!!

The technology has been around for decades. I tried to sell it to airports during the late 1990s. But it's always down to 'who is going to pay for it?' - the added safety aspect of avoiding wrong take-off calculations never seemed to matter.

It looks as if RY can expect a lot of ramp checks from now on, which might make the 20 min t/rounds a challenge!

I seem to remember that the fees were based on MLW (Max Landing Weight) for the type and not on MTOW. Things have obviously changed?

You think? I don´t, maybe apart from the french no one has the balls to do that. O`Leary will sue their butts off. And in todays sick justice system they most likely would win...

The MTOW is recorded on the loadsheet for every flight. I don't see how this could be "forgotten" or changed.
Sounds like a non-story to me.

If this story is true, it also raises questions for Ryanair's competitors. Through the ATC cost recovery system, they will have paid too much charges. How will they be compensated and reimbursed?

doudou_epl has the answer. My old company had variable MTOM. We had to declare to Ops which one we were using, and that was passed on to the authorities for charging purposes. No point paying more than required.

- we obviously go back some way together.:) When I was paying them it did.

- does your company forward all loadsheets to Eurocontrol and airport operators, then?

I predict a 'MTOM supplement'.

If the rules say you need to pay according to the highest MTOW the airframe is certified for, than that's what you need to declare every time to the airport authority and pay accordingly. According to the German DFS Ryanair did not comply with this rule at least on several occasions.

As stated previously, ATOW has nothing at all to do with en-route charges.

Except it's the wrong one.

Airplane panic attack - YouTube


So, Ryanair (the "hysterical woman" here ) . . . . 1st in the Q was France, followed by Italy, with Spain hot on their heels. Germany got their towel down a little late . . . . . and a few more lining up.

You can't say "**** You" to the whole world for 10 years without it coming back to bite you one day.

I would say their "Head of Communications" has timed his resignation pretty well.


Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said:

“I would like to thank Stephen for the fantastic job he’s done for Ryanair over the last 4 years. As a company that spends little on advertising, we rely on our Communications Department to generate loads of free PR, as well as responding to the never ending series of absurd claims and fanciful stories that surface on a daily basis. Working in the calm waters of Irish rugby should prove a piece of cake after 4 years in Ryanair. We wish Stephen every success as he joins the IRFU, and hope that they will be as successful over the next 4 years, as Stephen and Ryanair has been over the last 4.

“In the meantime we look forward to recruiting another brave soul to take on the “worst job in Irish PR” and look forward to grooming the next candidate to take over the high profile and incredibly overpaid position as Ryanair’s Head of Communications.”

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:

“I am sorry to be leaving Ryanair after 4 incredible years but I am looking forward to joining a great team at the IRFU. This is one of the fastest moving companies in Ireland, and I have enjoyed promoting Ryanair and dealing with the media across 22 different EU countries, as well as putting out fires, usually late on a Friday afternoon, when some crazy claim appears about Ryanair’s continuing 28 year success, our incredible safety record and our unbending commitment to offering the lowest fares to consumers in every market in which we operate.”





Oh BTW, NAS (and no doubt many many others,) also use this Variable MTOW sytem, via the EFB, the main difference from RYR being that we are entrusted to operate a Screwdriver :D

i get the feeling there is some confusion here about what these "weights" are and why they can be changed.

As I understand it - and correct me if I am wrong, it works like this...

Mr Boing states a structural MTOW. That can never be exceeded and I'll eat my hat if RYR does that.

RYR pay en-route charges to Eurocontrol based on a declared MTOW which is not a structural limit but a bureaucratic one which may be some lesser figure that they declare to Eurocontrol and is included on the repetitive flight plan (?) Matters not, it is declared for each airframe. (Think of it as a Flex MTOW) This is to bring that aircraft into a lower weight category to reduce en route charges as described above on shorter sectors where most of the fleet operates well below structural MTOW. The loadsheet will reflect this and state the reduced MTOW. As far as the crew are concerned that weight is the MTOW, it means little to them whether it is the structural or the reduced one. As far as the crew are concerned this goes no further than saying, "Ah. I see we have a heavyweight today" or - sometimes - "Uh oh. They've given is a lightweight for Alicante..."

In the event that the lightweight is allocated for a flight that needs more capacity usually a phone call to ops gets a new PLOG at the structural limit and the crew is happy. NO limits are exceeded, but the company must declare the change in weight to Eurocontrol so the correct en-route charges are levied.

It is easy to see how an unscrupulous operator might "omit" to declare that he is operating actually high weight aircraft when he has declared them all lightweights...I gather this is what is being suggested. If so it is a bureaucratic fiddle - nothing remotely safety related beyond indicating a worrying attitude to rules.

And I think we all know what the IAA are likely to do about that. I suspect (ha!) the DFS are rather more punctilious and Eurocontrol will probably not let them get away with it either. Time will tell.

BMA 707's did the same
 

i seem to recall when i was at BMA long ago our 707-320C's had a legally reduced MTOW on-paper to save on landing charges...
down from 151000kgs to something much less as we operated them on
short haul Med holiday flights

the ryanair thing sounds the same?

was ok back then afaik

Flex weights are nothing new and used by quite a few carriers for many years. We have around 5 to 7 different MTOWs that we can change as we like on the go. We get a few more passengers? Just change the MTOW on the loadsheet and off we go. That is indeed legal and approved by both the LBA (our governing agency), the DFS and eurocontrol. However from what i hear via the grapevine Eurocontrol will try to get rid of that system and rather use one fixed MTOW as that generates quite a bit more cash for them.

Nowadays the MTOW is changed by centralized load control (a third party contractor) most of the times, not us pilots anymore.

FR will not have exceeded the aircrafts MCTOM period.

What they may have done is declared one flex MTOM and operated at a higher weight, its not a safety issue as such, but if this is any more than an omission by the flight crew on a particular flight and is as widespread as the report suggests then repercussions may well be serious.

For those who don't quite understand this system let suppose an aircraft is doing a 4 sector day sector 1&2 DUB-STN-DUB mainly hand luggage TOM say 61000kgs sector 3 & 4 DUB-AGP-DUB full flight and lot of hold luggage TOM say 74000kgs so on the first two you pay Euro fee's based on 65T and on 3 & 4 you pay fee's based on 75T

What is alleged here is that Ryanair have deliberately declared a lower TOM when the actual was higher for no reason other than to lower their costs, where that to be proved (it wont be difficult to prove/disprove) then legal action will almost certainly follow, if this was proved to be deliberate and systematic across Europe heads will roll and the directors may face legal action themselves, suspension of their AOC could follow.

All airlines will likely face more SAFA checks now so make sure you have your doc's in order and your spare glasses!!

Airlines with EFB's normally require the commander to sign (electronically) that they have declared the correct TOM and with some airline change the ATOM plate in the flight deck for each flight at a different TOM i.e. 65T or 75T

Its hard work being an Ultra Low cost airline, but the list of questionable if legal practices continues to grow for FR what goes around comes around

I'd like to meet the Ryanair Captain who departs over the Placard weight deliberately to do a favour for O'Leary. In the 5 years i've been here i've only ever heard of it happening once and that resulted in a severe reprimand from the Captain concerned and a memo issue from Uncle Ray. Even then it only ever happened because the aircraft had been swapped to a non staffed engineering outstation and was set at 66.9 when it should have been 74.9.

RE: Comments on SAFA checks - they are not allowed to delay the scheduled operation. If they are scratching around in the wheelwell and I have a slot to keep they will be given their marching orders!

AHA! I understand now!

Perhaps the problem stems from around 2 years ago, when rather than recording the MTOW we selected on the voyage report, we were instructed to write the ACTUAL MTOW. That way, if we decided to fly 69.9 for a sector, and ended up after LMC being 66.8 it would look like we went 66.9 instead!

MrHorgy you got it spot on!

Since the change two years ago we sometimes fly at one MTOW but pay at the MTOW(lower) for the actual TOW. This was the original way of getting around the problem that pilots didn't do weight changes down route.

Organised avoidance of charges and probably fraud, but I'm not a lawyer.

According to Eurocontrol (Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on route charges | EUROCONTROL):

"The MTOW declared should be the maximum certificated take-off weight of the aircraft. In the case of multiple certificated take-off weights, the MTOW to be declared must be the highest weight authorised by the State of registration."

Then what is the point of using flexible MTOM? :confused:

- because when you are 'cosy' with the State of registration each notified MTOW is the max. - simples?