Yesterday I wrote about a viral picture of a Ryanair crew forced to sleep on the floor in Malaga Airport after a weather diversion.
Ryanair claimed, via chief operating officer Peter Bellew on Twitter, that the whole thing was staged. As unions denied this, Ryanair released CCTV footage “proving” that the photo was staged:
Ryanair exposes fake photo of cabin crew sleeping in crew room. Watch video here: pic.twitter.com/tzTn6EHsKH
— Ryanair (@Ryanair) October 17, 2018
Lucky was outraged by this invasion of privacy (the CCTV footage came from the airport crew room). I’m not nearly as outraged. If Ryanair crews want to stoop to faking photos to make a point, they should expect their unethical employer to do whatever it takes to expose them.
And when I say unethical employer, I mean it. I think the whole Ryanair situation is a mess. The blame for that falls not on disgruntled employees, but upon poor leadership at the top which has failed to find a proper balance in keeping employees happy and recording over $1BN in profit.
That’s the first twist and perhaps the second and third ones should not be surprising.
Spain-based aviation blogger Alex Macheras went back and forth with Bellew on Twitter. I give him great credit for his research in revealing two additional facts.
- The crew was only let into the lounge at 5:15 A.M. – the entire night was spent in the crew office!
- There actually were many hotels and guest houses available: Ryanair simply did not try hard enough.
Update: 24hrs later, unfort no response from #Ryanair’s COO @PeterBellew
‘Sala VIP’ lounge confirmed to me they have record of all visitors, no Ryanair crew entered,& the lounge closed at 11pm.
Booking .com say 1,834 rooms were available in Málaga areahttps://t.co/OtcaHr6H8N
— Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir) October 15, 2018
Bellew did eventually respond:
Thx for your reply Peter —
I’ve spoken to SalaVIP, & it’s unfort to hear crew did indeed spend night on office floor, until airport facilities opened at 5am.I know it was fiesta (I live here), but it’s still low season, plenty of hotel space. A shame crew weren’t accommodated.
— Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir) October 15, 2018
On the second point (sleep accommodations), the only possible excuse I can think of is if the flights arrived after midnight and bookings for what would technically be the previous night were shut off. This is Spain, not the 24/7 USA. I can see why most hotels or inns would not answer their phone in the middle of the night. Still, why give up at 42 hotels, as Ryanair admits? I have a feeling Ryanair never called the nicer hotels that would have picked up the phone…
CONCLUSION
This little soap opera demonstrates exactly why Ryanair crews strike so much. As details continue to unfold, look for more labor unrest. Sadly, the relationship between employees and management continues to deteriorate.
image: Escuela Superior Aeronautica
> Read More: Ryanair Dismisses Viral Photo Of 737 Crew Sleeping On Airport Floor
Hi Matthew. What about the employees’ photo was fake?
It was staged.
“Fiesta” in English? Is it so difficult to say Spain’s National Day, instead of making it sound like some sort of flamenco & bullfighting themed festival?
@Mike In Spain we say Fiesta or Feriado for any day off that is a national holiday. the flamenco & bullfighting is a making of your own imagination
They would have been far better off just taking pictures of the space and talking about how they were unable to sleep as a result. That’s essentially what the CCTV footage shows and it’s inecusable and indefensible. Faking the photo sadly only serves to undermine the crews very real and valid point.
I wonder how much longer Ryan Air can continue to be at war with its employees. These sort of conflicts rarely end well for anyone but sadly the employees usually get driven to the point where they have little choice.
Is this some sort of strategies to weed out spoken crewmembers? Its not uncommon in corporate worlds.