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Michael O’Leary ‘screamed and shouted’ at some staff, court told


Meetings to tackle pilot absenteeism at Ryanair had “bad outcomes” in some cases, according to the airline’s departing chief operations officer, Peter Bellew.

Ryanair group chief executive, Michael O’Leary, organised monthly meetings last year to discuss pilot absenteeism involving himself, Mr Bellew and others, the High Court has heard on Thursday.

Mr Bellew told the court that Mr O’Leary often became bad tempered at these meetings and “screamed and shouted” at some staff.

Discipline

He added that it was clear that Mr O’Leary wanted the pilots subject to “steadfast” discipline, while Mr Bellew felt that this would disillusion those staff further with the airline during a period when many of them were threatening to strike.

Mr Bellew said that he should have done more to stop Mr O’Leary as the meetings “had bad outcomes” for a number of people. “I regret that I did not stand up more to him,” he stressed.

Mr O’Leary last week told the court that he organised the meetings because he was concerned about a small number of pilots who called in sick either just before or just after taking time off.

He pointed out that Ryanair was doing no more than any other good employer would in the same situation and wanted to encourage the pilots to improve their attendance at work.

The issue was one of a number where Mr O’Leary and Mr Bellew clashed over the chief operating officer’s performance last year.

Mr Bellew told the court that relations between him and Mr O’Leary deteriorated from around July 2018, following a positive start to his time as chief operations officer, which began when he rejoined Ryanair in December 2017 from Malaysia Air.

Ryanair is suing Mr Bellew to prevent him joining rival Easyjet as chief operating officer next month. The airline maintains that he signed an agreement barring him from joining any competitor for a year after leaving the company when he accepted 100,000 share options in the carrier in 2018.

Procedure

Mr Bellew dismissed those options as “obsolete and worthless” in his evidence on Thursday. He says the non-compete agreement is null and void and denies breach of contract.

Earlier he said that safety regulators “screamed and shouted” at Ryanair representatives during a meeting to discuss the sacking of four cabin crew last year.

The airline dismissed the crew for refusing to fly from Cologne to Palma. Ryanair maintains that this happened following an internal investigation and disciplinary procedure.

Mr Bellew, told the court that the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), the State’s airline safety regulator. was unhappy with the incident.

He recalled that authority officials partially investigated it before calling meeting with Ryanair representatives that he attended on August 1 2018.

Mr Bellew described the meeting as the most difficult he had ever attended with a safety authority. “I had never heard a regulator screaming and shouting at airline management before,” he said.

Mr Bellew maintained that the IAA could have made a finding against Ryanair, but he convinced its officials that this was unwarranted. Instead he said that the authority and airline agreed a new protocol for dealing with such incidents in the future.

Regulations

He told the court that after the crew had refused to fly, Mr O’Leary, who was duty executive at the time, had contacted Mr Bellew, who was holidaying in Florida, and said that he would fly the crew to Dublin and sack them.

Ryanair maintains that only the commander – the flight captain – has the discretion to decide not to fly and that this did not happen in this case.

European airline safety regulations allow commanders the discretion not to fly where unforeseen circumstances, such as delays caused by adverse weather or air traffic control problems, could cause fatigue.

Ryanair told the court last week that complaints made by the crew were found to be baseless and they only raised the fatigue issue with regulators “post the event”.

Mr Bellew said that Mr O’Leary told him to attend the IAA meeting even though this was not part of his responsibilities.



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