[Anonymous]

[openfly]

The reports in the press and media concerning the Ryanair flight from GLA to IBZ on the 3rd of August smack of commercial policy and considerations taking a priority over potential flight safety and passenger comfort.

Police were called to the aircraft prior to departure to the behaviour of a group of 30 male passengers who were blatantly intoxicated. The police left the aircraft and Ryanair decided to depart with these passengers on board. Within minutes, according to other passengers, the behaviour deteriorated. But the flight pressed on to IBZ.

The commercial pressures by Ryanair, on its pilots, to operate the flight irrespective of the safety implications is unbelievable. It must have been hell for the rest of the passengers and cabin crew.

Some of the problem passengers were met by the police on arrival n IBZ, according to today’s media reports.

[Papillion53]

Canucklad – you weren’t on another stag do????? 😉 🙂

Seriously, if I had been on this flight, I would not have been happy at all. Hopefully the CC turned the heat up, literally, and they all fell asleep. But who do you blame – the airline or their representatives who called the police, or the police who presumably told Ryanair that it was OK to GO! I would hate to think that the police would make a decision based on a commercial airline’s financial interests to the detriment of others’ safety.

[NameRemoved-18/12/14]

Correct me if I am wrong, but it is the captain’s final decision in such circumstances.

[MartynSinclair]

From the information supplied on here (there are always 2 sides), I would imagine the Captain was unable to make a decision.

Interesting that the last Captain’s decision reported on this Forum was an offload decision for a family with a small child with a small cut under his eye….

Maybe cabin decisions ought to be left to Cabin Crew….. who ultimately have to deal with these situations…

[Edski777]

You can’t leave those decisions to the cabin crew. The captain is in charge. There is no way he can delegate responsibilities to another crewmember. He can delegate tasks, but remains responsible.

Striking is that before take-off the Scottish police boarded the plane and arrested nobody, although some of them were clearly intoxicated.
The police probably didn’t see a problem, but the situation got out of hand. There are quite a number of major airports en route capable of handling the situation if the captain decided to divert. The unruly passengers would have been severely punished, even to the point of reimbursing FR for the extra costs incurred.
Other reports indicate that the captain threatened to land at a Paris airport, but later decided to continue.

What is of real interest to me is whether it is a hype or that FR commercial policies overrule safety procedures. This should be thoroughly investigated by the authorities and in case of the latter FR should be severely punished.

[andystock]

Why were they even allowed to Board the aircraft if the first place?

[Edski777]

Exactly my point and then the police did nothing, the captain didn’t divert, but some passengers complained.

What was the real story if no professional in the whole chain took any action?

[Bucksnet]

Ryanair also departs with low levels of fuel, although probably at the bare legal minimum. There is a Dispatches program on Channel 4 next Monday exposing their fuel policy and pilot working conditions: –

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide

[AnthonyDunn]

Cripes, and after all the various points thrown at me recently regarding the consistency of service provided by Flyanscare….!

As I commented, and on the basis of direct, first-hand experience, any consistency of service on the “pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap” aerial bus service that is the Flyanscare business model is uniformly abysmal and/or inadvertent. And, on occasions, they’ve been pretty expensive to boot.

I am looking forward to the ritual denials from Flyanscare about their fuel policy and flying hours for their pilots and their standard refusal to put forward anyone on the programme if they do not have editorial control. On the basis of previous BBC Panorama programmes about FR, it is standard O’Blarney practice: either he/FR controls what goes out or he/FR does not appear.

[FormerlyDoS]

The passengers cannot have been drunk pre-departure, if the police attended, as it is an offence to be drunk on an aircraft.

[handbag]

Policy with BA.

At the boarding gate. Ground Staff deal with the situation. The Cabin Crew and Flight Crew are not involved in the decision, but must be informed of the outcome.

Between Boarding and Pushback. The decision on whether or not to carry a passenger rests with the Senior Cabin Crew Member using an assessment criteria. Passengers who are found to be drunk at this time have committed a criminal Offence and are always offloaded.

The Captain must be advised and briefed of the situation and if it is to offload, he must support ( he cannot override this decision)

However, if the SCCM decides to carry the passenger, then the Captain can over rule.

So basically if either the SCCM or the Captain say no , they will not travel.

For further information. For safety reasons, Flight Crew are not supposed to leave the Flight Deck to deal with disruptive passenger either on the ground or in the air. This is why the Cabin Crew would relay the information to the Captain.

I was a safety trainer for many years and I have never known it be any different.

I personally do not wish to get into a discussion as to whether people think this is a good policy or not, but this is the Policy.

[MartynSinclair]

handbag +1

[AnthonyDunn]

Gripping reading:

http://www.ukfsc.co.uk/files/Safety%20Briefings%20_%20Presentations/Cabin%20Safety%20-%20Disruptive%20Passenger%20Guide.pdf

The Air Navigation Order 2000, Statutory Instrument 2000/1562

Article 65(1)
A person shall not enter any aircraft when drunk, or be drunk in any aircraft.

Article 66(2)
A person shall not smoke in any compartment of an aircraft registered in the UK at a time when smoking is prohibited in that compartment by a notice to that effect exhibited by or on behalf of the commander of the aircraft.

Article 67
Every person in an aircraft registered in the UK shall obey all lawful commands which the commander of that aircraft may give for the purpose of securing the safety of the aircraft and of persons or property therein, or the safety, efficiency or regularity of air navigation.

Article 68
No person shall, while in an aircraft:
(a) use any threatening, abusive or insulting words towards a member of the crew of the aircraft.
(b) behave in a threatening, abusive, insulting or disorderly manner towards the crew of the aircraft; or
(c) intentionally interfere with the performance by a member of the crew of the aircraft of his/her duties.

So, the law is crystal clear. In which case, if the 30 or so males were not drunk when they got onboard, how come they got so drunk whilst on board that they potentially endangered flight safety? That’s a shed load of duty paids that they must have got through after take-off.

[FormerlyDoS]

If they had endangered the safety of the flight, the aircraft commander would have had no option than to divert and have them offloaded.

S/he did not.

[Author]

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