Ryanair accused of bullying pilots
According to a survey carried out by the unofficial Ryanair Pilot Group (RPG) of 1,000 pilots — more than a third of the airline’s total — 94% wanted regulators to conduct an inquiry into the impact of employment practices on safety.
The survey also found that 89% of pilots did not consider the airline to have an open and transparent safety culture and two thirds were not comfortable raising issues through an internal reporting system.
The full findings of the survey were revealed last night by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme.
Chairman of RPG, Evert van Zwol, said that some three-quarters of Ryanair pilots are employed through agencies and nearly all of these pilots are employed on zero-hour contracts — which offer no guaranteed work.
Mr van Zwol said a full independent inquiry was needed to establish if there were any grounds for safety concerns within Ryanair.
Last year, the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) launched an investigation following emergency landings by three Ryanair planes in Spain after they approached their minimum required fuel.
The report found two of the planes were carrying a little more than the minimum, and one a little less, and recommended that the airline review its fuel policies for planes flying into some busy airports during poor weather conditions.
In last night’s Dispatches programme, four Ryanair pilots spoke about how they felt their concerns were routinely ignored and about the pressures of working for the low-cost airline, which operates an internal league table where pilots are ranked according to the amount of fuel they burn. None of the pilots was identified.
In response, Ryanair issued a robust defence of its safety record and fuel policy and claimed that Dispatches had ignored evidence supplied to it by both the airline and the IAA which “disproves the false claims made by anonymous contributors”.
Ryanair said Dispatches relied upon “hearsay claims by anonymous alleged Ryanair pilots”, even though the airline had “offered legally binding guarantees to these individuals of no sanction if they made these claims on the record”.
This offer was made so Ryanair could publish details of their individual flight records, fuel records, sickness records, and safety reports which, Ryanair said, “would disprove their false claims”.
Ryanair also argued that the “false claims” were made by “representatives of pilot unions of Ryanair’s competitor airlines masquerading as a Non Ryanair Pilot Group”.
The airline said both it and the IAA “have confirmed that all Ryanair flights fully comply with the same EU fuel rules as all other EU airlines”.
The IAA said it regularly reviewed the fuel policy of Ryanair and had “no concerns currently that any undue upload restrictions implied or otherwise exist”.
Ryanair said in its annual report issued last month that it has not had a single passenger or flight crew fatality in almost 30 years of operation.
