Ryanair Blasts UK Aviation Regulator After Rescue Flight Ban Strands 177 Passengers
- Ryanair has slammed the UK Civil Aviation Authority after it was blocked from operating a rescue flight using an Irish-registered aircraft, leaving 177 passengers stranded overnight in Portugal. The airline has even called on the British Prime Minister to intervene.
Irish low-cost airline Ryanair has lashed out at the British aviation regulator after it reportedly refused permission for the carrier to operate a rescue flight to get stranded passengers back home with a plane registered in the Republic of Ireland.
Ryanair is so incensed with the “arbitrary” decision by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) that it is now threatening to sue the regulator to force it to allow Ryanair to use leased aircraft in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
Ryanair Flight Diverts After Disruptive Passenger Incident
The dispute arose after a Ryanair flight from Agadir, Morocco, to Manchester, England, was forced to divert to Faro, Portugal, late on Thursday evening due to what Ryanair claims was an incident involving a ‘disruptive passenger’.
The diversion meant that the pilots and cabin crew didn’t have enough legal hours in the bank to fly from Faro to Manchester, but Ryanair came up with a plan to use another plane and cabin crew who were ready and waiting in Faro.
CAA Refuses Rescue Flight Permission Due to Aircraft Registration
The use of this plane and crew was, however, dependent on Ryanair being granted by the CAA, and that’s where the plan unraveled as “CAA bureaucrats” refused the airline the necessary permission.
“This unlawful and arbitrary refusal by CAA bureaucrats means that Ryanair UK will now be forced to take legal action to compel the CAA to comply with the law”
Ryanair
The background to this dispute is the interesting way Ryanair arranges its fleet across different subsidiaries, all of which belong to the airline’s parent company, Ryanair Holdings plc, but operate under different Air Operator Certificates.
Ryanair has five subsidiaries, including Ryanair DAC, which is its oldest Ryanair airline that is based in Ireland and operates throughout much of Europe. In 2017, in preparation for Brexit, Ryanair set up Ryanair UK, which operates under a British air operators certificate.
Thursday night’s flight from Agadir to Manchester was being operated by a Ryanair UK-registered plane, whereas the aircraft and crew that Ryanair had on standby in Faro were registered to Ryanair DAC.
Passengers wouldn’t notice any difference between the two planes or crews, but red tape stops Ryanair from simply swapping a Ryanair UK plane and crew with a Ryanair DAC aircraft and crew.
Ryanair Threatens Lawsuit Over “Arbitrary” Red Tape
As a result, the passengers onboard Ryanair flight RK1265 were forced to spend the night in Faro and didn’t arrive back in Manchester until 1 pm on Friday – more than 12 hours later than scheduled.
“After several years of Ryanair Group airlines assisting each other with rescue flights on identical aircraft, which prevents delays and cancellations in unforeseen circumstances, the CAA today inexplicably refused to allow a Ryanair Group airline to operate a rescue flight for another Ryanair Group airline, disrupting 177 passengers,” a spokesperson for the airline explained.
“We call on the Prime Minister to intervene and demand that the CAA regulator removes these bureaucratic roadblocks it has so unnecessarily created for Ryanair UK and its passengers at a time when the UK economy urgently needs less CAA red tape and more connectivity and growth,” the statement continued.
Ryanair Already Suing UK Air Traffic Agency Over 2024 Meltdown
This isn’t the only potential lawsuit that Ryanair has planned against a British aviation institution. Earlier this month, it was revealed that the airline was suing the UK’s private air traffic control agency for £5 million over an airspace meltdown that stranded more than 700,000 passengers last August.
The embarrassing fiasco occurred during the busy August bank holiday weekend in 2024 when a computer glitch activated a failsafe system that prevented flight plans from being automatically processed.
Engineers were so bewildered by what had happened that it took hours for anyone to get to the bottom of what was causing the failsafe system to kick in.
It turned out that a one-in-15 million chance event occurred when the system tried to process a flight plan that contained an errant waypoint indicator, which forced air traffic controllers to manually process all flight plans passing through British airspace.
Ryanair claims that the NATS air traffic control agency should have acted quickly to resolve the issue and accused engineers of sitting at home in their pajamas as flights were grounded.
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