Isn’t it also the case that Ryanair minimise the risk, by
Now, I am not suggesting that (taking the above in the same order)
but all these things add up to a safer mission profile.
In light GA we call that “risk compensation” i.e. if a pilot (who is intelligent, and most are) knows he is not particularly good or current, he will avoid flying in crappy wx or to difficult airports. And since nearly all pilots are intelligent, and anyway virtually none want to get killed, that is why e.g. the FAA IR 6/6 rolling currency is just as good safety-wise as the JAA/EASA annual revalidation.
It is assumed that commercial pilots don’t take advantage of risk compensation – because they have to fly anytime the wx is above minima (etc) and if they refuse they will get fired. However an airline can run what amounts to the same thing. If there was a clone of Ryanair which spent its whole time flying to Lugano, Innsbruck, Samedan, Kathmandu, etc – do you think its safety record would be as good? That is one reason why the private/corporate bizjet safety record will never be as good as that of the airlines that do the same easy routes all the time.
What do you mean by clone of Ryanair? An airline that treats its employees and customers like crap, or one than has shiny new airplanes? :)
An airline with an excellent safety record operating in a rather demanding environment is Wideroe in Norway. Mostly short airfields, in the fjords, windy, steep approaches etc etc. They however appear to value their employees and treat them rather nicely. Now, if they didn’t, chances are their operations might not be as good as they are.
Peter – you are incorrect about the airport profile FR fly to. Surely your trip reports have shown you that Ryanair fly in and out of lots of small airports with nothing but a VOR or NDB and a set of PAPIs at best? Their business model is partly based on flying to secondary airports, which tend to lack facilities.
The perception that airline pilots spend most of their time on autopilot flying CAT 3 ILSs and and autolands is incorrect I’m afraid. Whilst some long haul companies (Most of the ME operators for example) mandate automatic flight immediately on departure and until a late stage on the approach, other companies apply a bit more common sense. I hand fly more at work than I would when flying single pilot IFR. At work, in good weather, normally surface to FL100 and 6-7000’ down to the ground. When flying on my own in an SEP, the AP goes in fairly soon after departure and comes out on intercepting the ILS.
I should also say that were an airline to do scheduled services to funky places in the Alps as described, under EU OPS, each airfield would require a special qualification for the crew involving sim training and possibly a supervised flight there with a Training Captain. There would also be strict weather minima for such places. It is the more casual attitude to the above and pushing marginal conditions that gets bizjet crews killed.
I have chatted “off the record” to several Ryanair pilots and they were perfectly happy with their position, and felt they had got a good job. They all commented that the training at the sim at East Midlands was very good quality.
Of course there will be a few malcontents. The press do a fair job of raking up the dissidents, we shouldn’t believe all we read in the papers…..
Just to set a few things straight , Ryanair do have a very good flight crew training and maintenance set up that is well respected within the industry.
They don’t as stated above only fly into CAT3 airports, they use the cheapest airports some of these can be quite challenging ( hence the high standard of crew training).
On the subject of the way they treat their crews……… It is appalling and I am sure that if I reported on this forum things that I have personally seen ( I worked a damp lease for RYR one winter but was not employed by them) Peter would have the RYR lawyers knocking on his door and the web site would shut within seconds………. so that is all I will say about RYR crew treatment except to say that usually only paying a few € more to another airline gets a flight that is far better value in terms of the way the airline respects you as a passenger largely because other airlines motivate their staff in this direction.
The famous Spanish fuel crisis mentioned above has far more to do with the appalling standard of Spanish ATC ( constant industrial action from the unions and a management that has put controllers in a position that they are personally libel if they issue a clearance that is not part of the flight plan IE a direct routing), the Ryanair aircraft involved all had loaded fuel above the minimum, it was the slow response from ATC that was the primary cause with the case being blown up in the press by the Spanish unions who are keen to keep their members in airport non jobs.
Would I fly RYR………. Yes but only as a last resort in there was no other way to do the trip.
