Ryanair pilots say company’s culture may hurt safety

A survey of more than 1000 Ryanair captains and first officers has found concerns about the low-cost carrier’s safety culture, and support for an inquiry by regulators. Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget airline by revenue, declined to comment on the survey on Sunday, but said it had an “unblemished 29-year safety record”. The scale of the survey includes more than one-third of the total number of pilots at the company.

The survey was triggered by a warning in April by Ray Conway, Ryanair’s chief pilot and a senior manager, that any pilot signing a petition – organised by the Ryanair Pilot Group and calling on regulators to evaluate whether the company’s employment model had an impact on the safety of flight operations, would be liable for dismissal.

The survey found that 67% did not feel comfortable raising safety issues through Ryanair’s internal reporting system. It also found 94% believed regulators should conduct an inquiry into the impact of Ryanair’s employment practices on safety. Of those participating in the survey, 89% said that, following this memorandum from Mr Conway, they did not consider that Ryanair had an open and transparent safety culture.

A practice in the company is to employ pilots not directly but instead through agencies, and by that way company offers them less favorable terms and conditions. Furthermore, some of the contracts are zero hours contracts where minimum working hours are not guaranteed. Around 70% of the firm’s 1,800 pilots are on zero-hours contracts which aside from everything else staff claim are risky.

Evert van Zwol, chairman of the Ryanair Pilot Group’s council, said to Financial Times the group had a “strong suspicion” that the airline’s employment practices may be affecting flight safety, but had no proof, which explained why an inquiry was warranted by regulators.

“The results of the survey are reason for very great concern and call for immediate action [by] all involved parties, to get working on a solution and lowering these [survey] percentages sharply down,” said Mr van Zwol.

Ryanair shares advanced 0.3% on Friday and have been up more than 56% since the beginning of the year.