Captain Imelda Comer penned a hard-hitting letter to Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary (pictured)
A current Ryanair pilot has slammed the company in an extraordinary open letter to CEO Michael O’Leary where she accuses the airline of ignoring safety rules.
Captain Imelda Comer is the first pilot to use her name when criticising the airline and penned the letter which she delivered to their headquarters in Dublin.
She has accused the firm – which has cancelled flights affecting 715,000 customers – of not listening to the pilots’ voice and said their way of interacting with pilots is ‘not in line with the normal practices’.
The firm’s crisis started after a miscalculation of pilots’ holiday dates and the news sparked outrage and a wave of negative media coverage across Europe.
Captain Comer also said the company has ‘missed the point of what pilots require’ if they are to help resolve the airline’s difficulties.
She wrote: ‘The old model has brought us to the current difficulties. Repeating the mistakes of the past will not help anyone to move beyond or resolve these difficulties to find future solutions.
‘I have been requested by my colleagues, both inside and outside our interim EERC group, to communicate this message to you, and to offer earliest negotiations in which pilots and their advisors can sit as equals at the table, to find the best solutions to enable all of us to look forward to a brighter future.’
It comes as the firm confirmed it will not be meeting with the new interim representative group for Ryanair Pilots which is known as the European Employee Representative Committee (EERC).
Captain Comer said Ryanair has ignored EERC communications in the past or argued that they were not from legitimate pilot representatives, reports RTE.
She revealed that the group was made up exclusively or Ryanair pilots from ‘several countries’.
In her letter, she also listed seven points the group of pilots are demanding, which includes new ‘properly negotiated’ contracts by next year.
She added: ‘Pilots want Ryanair to succeed and thrive. They want to minimise cancellations and will support as much as possible every effort to achieve this stability.
‘Pilots will surrender some of their leave to help resolve the current problems, but only in the context of the changes outlined above.’
She has accused the airline of not listening to its staff and said ‘repeating the mistakes of the past will not help anyone’
Her letter continued: ‘Your insistence on only negotiating with pilots, and only dealing with individual bases, is clearly not in the interests of pilots.
‘Your continued insistence on both approaches move everyone further away from a sustainable solution.
‘It may deliver you a short term fix in a handful of bases, but it will not resolve the deep seated issues that have been imposed on pilots over the last ten years, and have cumulatively given rise to our most recent difficulties.
‘To date, the company has refused to acknowledge the right of the pilots to engage as a collective group.
‘The company insists that you will only engage one base at a time. I respectfully suggest that this approach has failed the company, as evidenced by the shortage of pilots that has led to the cancellations crisis.
‘It has also failed the pilots, as evidenced by the departure of so many colleagues and the short average length of pilots serving in Ryanair, as reported in Ryanair’s annual reports.’
Captain Comer also reiterates the demands of pilots, including permanent local contracts negotiated by 1 January 2018, benchmarking of conditions with regional competitor airlines, and the right to have professional assistance in negotiations.
She says that if the required assurances are given, pilots will be happy to disclose their identities and fully engage in meaningful and constructive discussions to resolve the outstanding company difficulties.
The airline has since been scrambling to appease its pilots and promised them significant improvements in pay and conditions.
It told already told its pilots they may not get pay increases for up to five years if they do not accept proposed pay rises with no negotiation through joint representative bodies.
Ryanair has said reports it had a pilot shortage were false and that less than 260 of its 4,200 pilots had left so far this year amid some being poached by rival Norwegian Air Shuttle.