How safe is it to fly with Ryanair?

Question

Recently I've heard stories about Ryanair's reputation when it comes to safety procedures. I heard that most of the time they ignore the safety procedures required by law to operate a flight. Since they're a budget airline, they keep turnarounds under 25 minutes, and there have been reports that this is putting passengers in danger.

Mostly I'm referring to the statements made in the terrifyingly scary documentary shown on Channel 4 about two undercover reporters who show safety and health procedures being ignored, and exhausted cabin crew complaining about the number of hours they are forced to work, and negative experiences they had with the airline.

Another scary moment in the video, is when the instructor tells the class that passengers seating in 1A, will most definitely die if there is any sort of incident where the aircraft collides, as there is some metal rod that can shoot through the passenger's skull.

Also see a Guardian article.

How safe is it to actually travel with this airline, how are such practices not enforced by the law, and routinely checked?

Answer 1

The number of fatalities caused by a certain airline does NOT reflect how safe that airline is. The number of fatalities can be very high due to a single accident which is caused by reasons not related to the safety of the airline in question.

Usually people tend to think of safety only when it comes to airplanes, this is wrong. The safety of an airline is much more than that, it is embedded in every single thing, it is more of a culture than just a bunch of policies and procedures.

In general, I would rather fly in a twenty-year-old Ryanair airplane than in a one-year-old plane in an African airline. Why is that? EU civil authorities have very strict policies and procedures, lately they've even started forcing the new safety principle called SMS (Safety Management System) which simply involves all parts of the airlines in the safety, including the higher management since the first principle of this system is to put the liability and responsibility on the higher management instead of just blaming some employee when something happens under (human error).

Also, the random checks conducted by the EU authorities are a pain in the ass to all airlines, they are brutal and serious. They will have no problem issuing all kinds of punishments if they have a finding, including suspending the airline. I personally deal with this stuff in my job and I know how good they are.

Talking of crew duty hours, just to let you know, as a crew member for long time I met a lot of crew members from all over the world, we all have the same complaint (duty hours). It is a universal thing for crew members to complain about. That's due to the anti-routine schedules where crew members have to work weekends and holidays and nights etc. But AFAIK, in EU crew members can not exceed 100 credit hours per month, and that's even less than in the US or the middle east where crew members can fly up to 120 credit hours.

One more thing, crew members who fly for domestic or regional airlines, such as Ryanair, tend to complain more about working hours because they need more flights to reach the 100 credit hours, unlike flying for international airlines, where you can make the same amount of credit hours in 4 or 5 long-haul flights. When I first joined I needed like forty domestic legs to reach 70 hours, but once I had enough seniority I could make the same by flying three flights to the US only!

Bottom line, EU civil authorities are the best when it comes to the safety of different airlines, either the EU ones or the foreign ones that fly to the EU. So, having permission to operate in the EU is enough proof that the airline is safe enough. This is my opinion as a safety person.

Answer 2

While I wouldn't dismiss safety procedures as unnecessary, you know very well that you will not automatically be hurt if an airline ever skimps on one. According to Wikipedia, Ryanair has had exactly one "incident and accident" in its entire history.

Two crew members and eight passengers were taken to hospital with minor injuries

That's it. Any airline you have heard of has had more, and has had fatalities. I would have a lot of reasons for avoiding Ryanair (constant vigilance to avoid sneaky fees; bad customer service; drunken fellow passengers who want only the cheapest possible flight) but believing the plane might crash, or that a crash would somehow be worse on Ryanair because of decisions they've made about turnarounds, maintenance or what planes to buy would absolutely not be the reason I avoid them.

Answer 3

I've watched the documentary, I should note that it's several years old (2006 if I'm reading the roman numerals at the end right), EU regulations have changed since then and much of what they talk about is not directly safety related. Ryanair can not care about their customers (getting there, being happy, etc) -- as long as the care about the overall safety of the customers. There have been more recent documentaries, and court cases, etc -- here's Ryanair's response to the most recent: http://www.ryanair.com/en/news/ryanair-releases-channel-4-dispatches-letters

I can't read the Times article the Guardian one references as it's behind a pay wall but I'd wonder if the term 'dangerous' is actually in the initial report, or has been added by the newspapers -- there's nothing to say that particular approach was dangerous, it may have been unusual or illegal for noise reasons (which maybe why the co-pilot recommended to go around) but there's no clear evidence it was outright dangerous. Additionally, why are pilots going to attempt something dangerous when their own life is at stake?

It may be true that Ryanair cuts things as close as possible, but that's to maximize profits. The worst possible thing for their profits would be a serious incident or safety breach -- the people running Ryanair are smart enough to know that. Similarly they have to comply with the regulations, a serious breach would ground planes and hurt profits.

I think the documentary picks up on some small points and sensationalizes them, you're likely as safe on a Ryanair flight as anything else. Many of the points they make are just par for the course with budget airlines -- i.e. being stranded in the middle of nowhere -- you pays your money, you takes your choice. But I think you're just risking your comfort and sanity -- not your safety.

As pointed out above, despite all of this Ryanair has a good safety record (and they fly a ton of flights). They will be being independently audited by everywhere they fly.

Final note -- that documentary had it's undercover reporters working for Ryanair for 5 1/2 months each. Almost a full year to gather maybe 20 minutes of the worst footage they could. There may have been a lot of cherry-picking in there, I wonder how many examples of good service, good safety -- or just generally adequate -- got left on the cutting room floor ...

Answer 4

The European Aviation Safety Rules are quite strict and non-compliance will quickly get you grounded or banned (if you are a non-EU carrier) from European skies.

While there may be some trivial difference in overall safety between airlines that comply with these rules, any airline that is in compliance is far safer to travel with than driving.

If Ryanair was in non-compliance it would have had its planes grounded a long time ago. These rules are not just on the books, they are actively enforced, including surprise inspections of planes. Given the stories cited in the question, it is highly probable that Ryanair has been given extra scrutiny as a result. Since they are still flying, there can not have been anything seriously amiss.

Answer 5

Documentaries are irrelevant since the airline has had a long track record of safe flight. According to Wikipedia, there was only one (non-fatal) incident and it was due to bird strikes damaging the engines. This is actually quite impressive considering they're one of Europe's biggest airlines by number of aircraft.

Answer 6

JACDEC is an 3rd party organisation which provides aircraft index of 60 main carrier, Ryanair ranked 32th or in middle level.

With comparsion of other LCC including Southwest(24th), Easyjet(22nd), Air Berlin(20th), Jetstar(25th) and Sichuan(24th), Ryanair safety is relatively low, but it is still better than several large all-services like American(29th) and Air France(39th).

Ryanair has one of the youngest fleets , averaged 6.7 years., much better than the main airlines which aged average over 10 years (except ME3).

Answer 7

I'm not inexperienced when it comes to flying for a major airline in the UK. I've been flying now for a major low cost airline for more than two years. The pay is good as are a number of perks, but I know that Ryanair pilots are not given the same advantages.

In my own airline, we are required to work what we would consider as pilots to be an unsafe number of hours. There are a number of posts here commenting on European regulations on the maximum number or hours we can work and their strict enforcement. This is true. But it does not mean that this is a safe number of hours. The authorities are heavily swayed by the airlines' management; what they say is safe is not necessarily so. I work with a number of captains who I routinely have to correct. This is not their fault; they are simply overworked; too tired to safely operate in my opinion. Reporting this is difficult, as there are so many people willing to take my job that we are scared to raise concerns for fear of losing our livelihood. We all have bills to pay after all. I am also very very tired most of the time, though being younger, perhaps I am slightly more resiliant.

These are not the days where pilots had lots of money and had fun downroute; we are heavily worked and it is difficult to raise concerns. To give you an idea, train drivers and bus drivers are given far more breaks, and less hours. But we, who arguably have more lives and responsibility in our hands, are worked harder. New EU regulations are actually being brought in to increase our maximum hours from 900/year to 1100. It's too much as it is.

Only when a major incident occurs may this attitude of the airlines and authorities change. Just because it hasn't occurred yet does not mean it won't. Even when it does, the system will blame the pilots, for not reporting "too tired to fly." But when you are bullied into not reporting this for fear of losing your job; we have something of an issue.

Think twice before flying with Ryanair, their plight is worse than in my airline, and we're close to breaking point!

Answer 8

I found a site which has a lot of information about plane crashes, including accidents history, statistics and events by airline. I checked for RyanAir and found just 1 accident, (as @Kate wrote in her answer). It was in 1987, so if you consider that RyanAir is flying for almost 30 years without an accident, that seems pretty safe, at least from the perspective of a traveler. If you want to know from people who work (or worked there), perhaps you should ask in Aviation Stack Exchange.

Answer 9

Ryanair as many other European operators is very safe due to high ATC & maintenance & crew training standards applied in EU in general. Accidents of such are extremaly rare last to think of Spanair crash back in 2008. Relatively recent AirFrance crash was related to extreme weather conditions and took place outside Europe so wouldn't qualify for comparison. So the chances of accident of EU-carrier in Europe are practically nonexistent outside of reasons such as terrorist act, willfull action ect.