Ryanair and 900 hours a year limitation?
 

I was under the impression that there was a 900 hours per year restriction on the flight time of pilots under JAA. I have heard STRONG rumours that the pilots in Ryanair are being PERSUADED to overfly the 900 limit .

Is there any truth in this and is it indeed a limit or not??

They could always do what my last company did i.e. 'lose' the records!

I think JAA have not yet negotiated a common FTL scheme. Each carrier has to (appear) to conform to national regs. CAP371/FAR121 or whatever. Don't know what the Irish reg are.

Difficult to lose the records when your log book is an official record of your hours.

IAA limit is 900 per year

My sister Dolly tells me she is shocked at your suggestion longferterride. The gallant pilot force at Ryanair haven't been persuaded at all.

As she pointed out a few weeks ago the persuasion was applied to those lovely people at the Irish Aviation Authority. For the second time they have zeroed the pilots 900 hour cumulative records - so no problems coping with the summer program then!

Obviously the troops are joyful at being able to help out in any form of creative accounting. Dolly asks me to point out, rather grimly I thought, that the first time she offered this little tit bit of news not a single member of the usual cheerleading squad rebutted her.

Where's a flying irishman when you need an accurate putdown on a serious safety issue she asks?

That's a very worrying and serious accusation.

What hope is there for any of us - crew, passengers, anyone - if the one body responsible for overseeing safety standards and the regulations (which are, let's face it, basically there for safety) quite blatantly flouts them itself?

Would anyone from the IAA care to comment on this allegation?

FR want to raise the yearly limits to 1300 hours.

longferterride

Yes that is correct. The point being that the CAA (in the UK) only look at the company records. Our CAA Ops. Inspector was as useful as a chocolate teapot.

The choice was do it or look for another job. Some companies lose (note one 'o') records when it suits them.

Much the same way in which deliberate adding errors would be made to the loadsheet in order to reduce the weight below MTOW.

The company I refer too is no longer in business but these operators will always be with us.

If the IAA are NOT sanctioning this flexible accounting of hours and indeed still wish their pilots to abide by the 900 hours limit, where does it leave the poor unfortunate pilot on the day of an incident? Of course the company will stand behind the pilot and admit that they made him fly for fear of his job. I can hear the lawsuits now!!

What a terrible situation your job or your licence. Doesn't sound like Ryanair can even spell flight safy. :mad:

On a brighter note. If there was an accident, god forbid, and if the company is flouting the law, then some of the directors could find themselves spending a very long time showering with their backs to the wall.;)

At Ryanair, the hours were originally worked to a rolling twelve month 900hr limit. This year the hours were zeroed on April 1st. Therefore, the new limitation is 900hrs from April 1st to March 31st every year.

If you fly for a living there are two things that you should never do

Anything that puts your life in jepoardy.

Anything that puts you licence in jepoardy.

You are better off unemployed than doing something that could put you out of a livelihood for ever.

If you get caught then you do bear some of the resposibility.

Pitts S2B

What a wonderfully pious statement.

Guy´s I know for a fact that Ryanair does take this 900 hrs per year very seriously. I know that it is a hard job to pu t the schedule together with regards to hrs. i know also that if accidents happen and they have and men go over 900 hrs per year they are put on a 1 months leave, and I know men who have done that. ( 1 hour is enough to do this) Ryanair is a professional company which does every thing by the book and doesn´t cut corners.

My sister Dolly is immensely reassured by config's reply.

So, FR and the IAA were simply tidying things up - indeed they like things to be so tidy that it is the second time in less than 4 years that they've got the dusters out and zeroed the hours.

Dolly thinks it's really about time these progressive ideas caught on. So no messy individual rolling year anymore - it runs from April to March - a sort of administrative year.

That's it! Just like the administrative week that the UK CAA are presently banning because of the long and dishonourable history of roster abuse and fraud it created.

So in reality it's the CAA who are the dinosaurs for insisting on maintaining records of rolling hours for every statutory time limit.

Well done Dublin and trebles all round:eek: :eek: :eek:

Oh, who do you think you are kidding Mr...............

All very strange this zeroing of the hours since a gentleman at the IAA stated that Ryanair had only been allowed to zero the hours on the proviso that NO ONE went over the 900 hours in the process of doing it. Meaning that even though on paper the hours were zeroed as of April 1, no one was allowed to pass the 900 limit due to the zeroing. As he put it it was a paperwork exercise.

As for MINDTHEGAP yes prior to April 1 (a very apt date) the 900 was taken seriously, and will be again come next April Im sure. In the meantime I am aware of quite a few people who have pointed out the fact that they are going over the 900 hours and been told to put up or shut up as it were!!

Hello Uk. CAA wake up!! this is happening on your patch!! they,re not really an Irish Airline any more.Irish registery just allows them do as they wish.Hardly an even playing field for Uk registered operators and very worrying for the fare paying public travelling on what is an effectively unregulated "flag of convenience" carrier.

It would be interesting to know the relative numbers of aircraft and pilots based @ DUB & STN.

I suspect that they are an Irish airline only in name and should be regulated by the CAA not the IAA.

Ryanair is as much an Irish airline as is Aer Lingus. The company HQ and flight ops are based in Dublin, all the aircraft are Irish registered so that makes them an Irish airline.

Just because they were clever enough to make full use of deregulation and base a part of their operations somewhere else does not make them a flag of convenience carrier!

Neither does it give them a right to flout regulations to their own ends!!!!