Airport ambulance driver launching suit after 'Ryanair plane almost struck her'
 

Airport ambulance driver launching suit after 'Ryanair plane almost struck her after she was cleared to cross runway' - Independent.ie

What I don't understand is that surely keeping a lookout and maintaining awareness is an essential part of being a pilot. Should this obligation be spread to other airport staff?

What would happen if all pilots who were cleared to land and had to 'go around' sued for emotional distress? The industry would grind to a halt.

Maybe I'm just being insensitive, but I think all ATC instructions should be followed with a dose of common sense.

Sadly, it's too much to expect a dozy journalist to ask what reason would require an ambulance to cross a live runway in the first place.

Consider this scenario:

There's a 737 happily taxiing around the airfield. Suddenly an ambulance/fire truck/police car with sirens on appears, and is speeding because of some incident. The plane and the vehicle with blue flashing lights cross each other's path.

Who do you think has the right of way?

........correct. The airplane.

If you have a 737 bearing down on you at over 100 kts, then the question of who has right of way is kind of academic. :O

Oh dear, why does the cynic in me think she's trying to make a quick buck?!

I dont think 100 kts is normally the sort of rate aircraft taxi at dave ..

Psychological injuries??
I'm sure they have nothing to do with monetary compensation, right?

PS: Hotel Tango, you beat me to it.

It is Ryanair...!

It appears that the aircraft was taking off The lady concerned was apparently paying attention, looking out and made the correct decision to stop. Is that a reason enough to end up suffering from stress and seek compensation?

If it is then I am jumping on that band wagons.Taxying out at Manchester in the summer a foreign aircraft took a wrong turn. Fortunately my Captain and I noticed in time to be able to stop and give way. If we had not we could have collided head on. I am stressed and traumatised, I will have to sue the company who owned the aircraft which took a wrong turn.:ok:

No, but it's helpful to be at least that fast when you're in the process of taking off. :O

Under the Air Navigation order and other laws and regulations, aircraft have the right of way on an airport.

I very much doubt she will have much of a case, unless she can prove the ground crew, ATC or aircrew made a deliberate attempt to hit her...

Pathetic.
 

Pathetic. Utterly pathetic. What a disgrace to ambulance drivers this woman is/was.

This must give a whole new meaning to Ambulance chasers !!

So a person whose daily life involves pulling people out of car prangs and people knocked down in the street; drug addicts, suicides and all the rest - is perturbed by seeing an aircraft taking off on a runway when she is crossing a runway at an airport?

Nice try.

Because you are the black sheep in a herd of white lambs ;)

Does this mean I can sue anyone who busts a level and sets off the STCA?

She had been about to cross a runway when she saw the plane coming ahead of her and about to take off.

O’Neill, of Beaverstown Orchard, Donabate, Co Dublin, said she felt the plane had been only meters away from her and if she had not stopped the ambulance, she would have hit the aircraft.


Sounds like she admitted culpability

Are we sure she was crossing a runway ? Today's sloppy journalists seem to think that any part of an airport the "runway"

She seems to be saying she was cleared to cross a runway that had traffic on it. Presumably that shouldn't have happened. Of course, it may well not have . . .

My thoughts are with the Ryanair crew who presumably choked as the non-sequitur of collecting an ambulance on the TO roll flashed through their minds.

Interested to know if the ambulance driver was the only one to put this one in the/a report.