Ryanair passengers held hostage

[cnc]

what bothers me here is that people like airazurxtror would yell murder and fire if it would have been a classic legacy airline.
an other thing i find bizar is that STN is an FR base.

[crew1990]

And what about the air conditioning, PAX was as well asking for it! But this is Ryanair policy do not use any air conditioning on the ground.

I refer to this video wich proof that it´s not the first time, of course the pilots doesnt care, there are in their flight dck door closed, window opened.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aOYqgXMjy-0

This is once again a typicall Ryanair procedure to save some fuel.

[Inquirer]

another FR flight ending up with the police coming to the rescue of the passengers, while the crew just stands there and doesn't grow a pair (...) no more extra help than allowed by strict company policy is offered and the crew hides in the galley.

To me it is obvious crew at ryanair are under the most strict obligation by their company not to take any decision which may cause additional costs or delays to a flight, be it taking extra kerozine due to possible adverse weather, over firing up the airco during a delayed departure, to ordering a few bottles of water for a free handout in cabin, or even just re-opening a door of the plane past the scheduled departure time, and so they do not dare to deviate from whatever standard procedures they are drilled to apply in normal conditions to the point where indeed it leads to ridiculous situations like this one if the situation doesn't get solved quickly (by others).

Excuse me saying, but the police shouldn't become ryanair's handling agent in case or irregularities all the time as they now seem to have become.

[cathay belgium]

Hi,

Flanker.. Is FR operating under an east german flight certificate?

Personnaly I think that they were lucky to be in STN in a lot other countries the result could have been worse..
Without drink only for dehydratation...!
Pax can't be treathen like cattle...
With so many millions profit a minimum of respect towards your customers in such, one time happenings events could make a difference..
Point to faults here : FR very strict policies on saving costs... Crew worried about there jobs...
Despite the lot of positive changes in FR policies, I regret that a solution with respect to human beings wasn't integrated for such very rare occasions solutions.
I myself regret the second luggage, boarding pass cheaper,name faults waived, etc...
Because that was just part of flying ryanair,people knew it and could have known it so they could avoid it!
But no drinking water,not letting people back in the terminal waiting room instead of plus three hours in a plane...
Captains are in charge of their plane and they could have come up with reasonable solutions, without being scared for loosing their jobs, in other cases your just a busdriver from the corner...
A real CEO would have been lucky to have such pilots, free water, some airco or a waiting outside would have calm down the pax and didn't cost that much instead of all the bad PR now..
This simple and not costly efforts would have calm down pax in first place...
There are resonable LCC-pax you know, who will help the crew but simple basic things are needed first I guess..
Guess some policies need to be changed,..Fr policies and Airport policies.. In such the police didn't had to intervene, it wasn't their role in any case.. Only with a hijack...
Just my toughts...
CXB

[flightlover]

First of all, the video illustrates the society of self-involved, self-pitied complainers that we have become.
Some females trying to escalate the males, knowing that they are 189 against 4 crews + 2 pilots.
Some using their kids or other people's kids as a bargaining tool to get the crews and police to do something that might get them fired, just to save themselves a few hours of "freedom" that they'll probably just spend doing nothing important.

A few minutes, a few hours, what does it really matter? It's not like the crew are holding macheti's and raping the women... it's not like they are on the sinking Titanic with immediate threat to their life. In fact, people don't need to eat and drink constantly, otherwise how could one sleep at night? and it was night, right?
They had plenty of time to buy drinks and sandwiches while the airport was open!.

... and they where not locked inside a plane for way longer than they anticipated.

My remarks:
1. Congratulations to the crews for keeping their nerves. They weren't there for their pleasure, that is certain..

I can't imagine any one on board wanted to be part of it

2. Imagine yourself as cabin crew at the end of the day, when the last of the catering is on board, armed with 30 cans of 20cl juice and 3 cl bottles of alcohol... if you give one can to a passenger, the other 188 pax will want their share... so the best you can do is to keep it in order to provide it only to people starting to show signs of dehydration and the children. Giving alcohol is out of the question, it will only make matters worse.

3. They have some nerves at STN, to treat FR and all those passengers like that..

You get what you pay for?

4. Bravo to the police for breaking the pax into the terminal, they can get in trouble for that... pax also seemed to ignore the no-smoking policies, and were trying to smoke on an apron where the APU was running.
But pax don't understand all the bureaucracy that comes with an airline operation, and their little nicotine addiction and self-pity is so much important to them..

Indeed the police did cross a line here and passengers shouldn't have smoked. But I dare you to try and do everything without breaking one rule. Some rules are there just to make sure someone is to blame when something goes wrong.

5. When you travel aboard an aircraft as paying passenger, you forfeit some rights. When you are on an aircraft, one of those forfeited rights is the right to step out of an aircraft at any time you wish. You can't step out of an aircraft unless the crew deems it safe. It's not safe to have 189 pax walking on the apron, whether the airport is open or closed for service, and you can't control 189 pax if you're only 4 crews. If they find the terminal closed, some pax might start running towards fences, trying to jump over them... .

They agreed on a travel plan that was way shorter than what they ended up with. So sorry to say so, but despite the braking of the rules I applaud the police for making sure people didn't have to endure that agony way longer.

6. As for the pilots hiding away from sight with cockpit doors closed... well in such situations it doesn't take much to go from irritated pax to hijack status... all it takes is for a pax to enter the cockpit and start threatening the pilots and you have a hijack... it's a very thin line there.
Oh yeah the pilots were there, an aircraft with an APU running must be under direct supervision of flight or maintenance crew who know how to cut off the fuel flow if there's a APU fire. And the APU was running..

1. This pilot hid from sight as he didn't have the balls to make sure it wouldn't come this far. I mean, if he noticed they wouldn't be able to fly that evening he should have made the call to start de-boarding. The captain has ultimate responsibility in this situation.

2. When the APU was running, why wasn't the airco on?

If you're naive enough to think that our egoist selves of this working generation will respect the personality of the captain, you are mistaken... I've seen plenty of pax insulting captains who apologetically stood by the cockpit door in a sign of respect towards their delayed pax... with FR but also in BRU, with SN.

It doesn't matter if it's FR or some other airline.
I'm disgusted that none of the (male) pax came in support of the crew who were overwhelmed and instead filmed it to show how "evil" they are to keep them "hostage"...

If you dare to point your finger at the FR crew in this scenario, having watched the clip, I'm sorry but you're an egoist whiner and a shame for humanity, as are the many complainers seen in this video.

Also the crew will be more cooperative, thankful and distribute drinks to those in need if the group shows more maturity and doesn't behave like children. If you see that a group behaves like children like in this video, the last thing you want to do is to give in to any of their demands, as it will escalate into something ugly.

I hope you'll never end up in a situation like this and turn in to ' a whining child'.

*edit due to a comment had to be removed as it was not applicable to the quote.

[sean1982]

what bothers me here is that people like airazurxtror would yell murder and fire if it would have been a classic legacy airline.
an other thing i find bizar is that STN is an FR base.

And now the FR bashers don't? They are having a field day as you can read.
My dear inquirer, cxb, and all the rest ... You still dont get it dont you? (Off course you get it, but just want to nag on about it)

The crew DID try to sort it first. They DID try to call MULTIPLE times for passengers to dissembark and received NO answer. So what would you geniuses have done if you are stuck in an airplane and no one answers your radio messages? Indeed, you call the police.

It has nothing do with cost saving (the APU was ON btw, their was aircon)
Your reactions just prove that you have no experience with the complexity of airline operations. It's not because a crew "wants" something, that it will be done

[sean1982]

another FR flight ending up with the police coming to the rescue of the passengers, while the crew just stands there and doesn't grow a pair (...) no more extra help than allowed by strict company policy is offered and the crew hides in the galley.

To me it is obvious crew at ryanair are under the most strict obligation by their company not to take any decision which may cause additional costs or delays to a flight, be it taking extra kerozine due to possible adverse weather, over firing up the airco during a delayed departure, to ordering a few bottles of water for a free handout in cabin, or even just re-opening a door of the plane past the scheduled departure time, and so they do not dare to deviate from whatever standard procedures they are drilled to apply in normal conditions to the point where indeed it leads to ridiculous situations like this one if the situation doesn't get solved quickly (by others).

Excuse me saying, but the police shouldn't become ryanair's handling agent in case or irregularities all the time as they now seem to have become.

You are not excused and this whole post is a blatant lie, again
I could list you all the points you just mentioned from the OM A.

[FlightMate]

Well, if they didn't get fuel, I doubt they could have got catering.

But Stansted being a big FR base, they could at least have contacted somebody from operations to take care of all that mess.

[sean1982]

They DID flightmate!! No answer, they had left. Then what do you do?

[Inquirer]

And now the FR bashers don't? They are having a field day as you can read.

As far as I am concerned, I haven't bashed ryanair at all, quite on the contrary!
I see it as a logical consequence of their business model, in which there's clearly nobody in the backoffice to help resolve unforseen situations and everything is left to external contracted parties to resolve and in their absence to the improvisation of the crew on duty.

It should however be obvious that whatever contingency plans flight crew have in case of long tarmac delays, they are not really working very well, while at the same quite a few of your colleagues are clearly lacking the desire to take creative initiatives too when the contingency plan falls apart right in front of their eyes, to the point where there no other option available but to call the police to invervene in what are not exactly emergency situations either...

I hope you can agree that just because a flight can't depart within a reasonable timeframe for whatever reason, shouldn't result in the police being called and having to break in, is it?

The crew DID try to sort it first. They DID try to call MULTIPLE times for passengers to dissembark and received NO answer. So what would you geniuses have done if you are stuck in an airplane and no one answers your radio messages? Indeed, you call the police.

You do not call the police because things don't go as planned, you call for help from your company as they are responsible for the wellbeing of their customers during the flight.
It's a bit like when your car doesnt start. You do not call the police for that either, you call your car dealer and have him look at it. You call the police when your car is stolen, not when it's just not starting.

In fact, I don't know if you fully realize what you are saying, but what you've just said is that when things don't go as planned at ryanair, crew will try to fix it themselves, but if that doesn't work out emergency services are the next and already final resort.

Your reactions just prove that you have no experience with the complexity of airline operations. It's not because a crew "wants" something, that it will be done

Oh, I am the first to admit I have no experience with airline operations other than being a very frequent flyer and I can tell you that I have had many occasions of cancelled or severely delayed flights, but never have I had to call the police to end the ordeal.
At each of the occasions, crew were informative and forthcoming in the cabin (not hiding in the galley or cockpit), free cabin service was increased and if the delay became too long or no solution was in sight, extra company staff came over to assist in an ordely disembarkation, even late at night!
The idea to just keep everybody on board for the night and sit it out is simply ridiculous to start with really and so the outcome of it -police being called in to assist- shouldn't surprise!

If you call that opinion bashing, I can tell you you're lacking a fair bit of common sense

[sean1982]

You do not call the police because things don't go as planned, you call for help from your company as they are responsible for the wellbeing of their customers during the flight.
It's a bit like when your car doesnt start. You do not call the police for that either, you call your car dealer and have him look at it. You call the police when you'r car is stolen, not when it's just not starting.

In fact, I don't know if you fully realize what you are saying, but what you've just said is that when things don't go as planned at ryanair, crew will try to fix it themselves, but if that doesn't work out emergency services are the next and already final resort.

Do you really think that they did not try to call operations in DUB? And what are they going to do? Also call the same phone where they didn't receive an answer. If the police has to give the airport duty manager an ultimatum then that says enough, the crew and company did what they could. To stay in the same analogy, the airport was "stolen" as nobody answered and they we're looking at a closed and locked terminal

Do you REALLY think that the captain and FO looked at each other and said:"oh well, let's just sit here for the next 6 hours untill 06am than"? Who says the crew we're hiding in the galley or in the flightdeck? At the start of the video there is a PA done from the flightdeck and the flightdeckdoor is open. God knows, how many times the crew have been in the cabin to explain that they were ALSO WAITING for info.

How much has the movie director edited out to make it seem worse than it was?

Oh, I am the first to admit I have no experience with airline operations other than being a very frequent flyer and I can tell you that I have had many occasions of cancelled or severely delayed flights, but never have I had to call the police to end the ordeal.
At each of the occasions, crew were informative and forthcoming in the cabin (not hiding in the galley or cockpit), free cabin service was increased and if the delay became too long or no solution was in sight, extra company staff came over to assist in an ordely disembarkation.
The idea to just keep everybody on board for the night and sit it out is simply ridiculous to start with really and so the outcome of it -police being called in to assist- shouldn't surprise!

If you call that opinion bashing, I can tell you you're lacking a fair bit of common sense

Exactly, you are a passenger, so you don't know what you are talking about. I'm pretty sure you've never been stuck in an airplane after the airport has closed, hence you have no expirience in this situation, hence the fact that this is a very RARE occurence. We have many delays on FR during a year and under normal circumstances they are always handled professional and helpfull.

[cathay belgium]

Hi,

Exactly, you are a passenger, so you don't know what you are talking about. I'm pretty sure you've never been stuck in an airplane after the airport has closed, hence you have no expirience in this situation, hence the fact that this is a very RARE occurence.

Indeed a rare situation, did you sean ?

We have many delays on FR during a year and under normal circumstances they are always handled professional and helpfull.

Has ANYONE mentioned the contrary ?

If the police has to give the airport duty manager an ultimatum then that says enough, the crew and company did what they could.

If so... we all have different point of view obviously..

MY conclusion is : this was a RARE situation but you have to admit that following the results THERE are people to blame... not the stewards ( poor them ) but a lack of a captain helping HIS crew, the AIRPORT manager and AIRPORT CONTROLLORS and FR rules concerning free drinks and airco use in RARE situations like this...
( and the guts of the captains for comin' up with original ideas .. )

Everybody his own opinion about the event, .. we are just pax.. you are just crew..
Guess the ones who could have make a difference wasn't you or me ...

CXB

[Inquirer]

Do you really think that they did not try to call operations in DUB? And what are they going to do? Also call the same phone where they didn't receive an answer. If the police has to give the airport duty manager an ultimatum then that says enough, the crew and company did what they could.

So you really think it is perfectly normal the police are frequenty called to ryanair planes for what are nothing but tarmac delays mishandled?

Your company better gets a more robust contingency plan in place asap, because whereas I am not doubting for a second that every company rule was followed very strictly by the crew (in fact, I know for sure they were), it's equally certain those rules aren't up to the challenges all the time.

What I find most shocking of all is that this didn't just happen at some remote airport, but at one of ryanair biggest bases and that seemingly nobody from the company could solve this problem?!

Exactly, you are a passenger, so you don't know what you are talking about. I'm pretty sure you've never been stuck in an airplane after the airport has closed, hence you have no expirience in this situation, hence the fact that this is a very RARE occurence.

First of all, a passenger is entitled to an opinion too as in fact he's the one paying your salary, so rather than tell him to shut up, you better listen to what they have to say and secondly,
you do not know where I have already ended up as a passenger, but I can tell you there were some far more challenging places than just Stansted or Charleroi with conditions a fair bit more hostile than you've seen on your flights: think Russian regional airports in winter for instance!
However, not even on UTAir have I seen such appalling handling standards!

[sean1982]

The police is not frequently called, this was as I say a rare occasion, however, as usual you don't read (or don't want to read) what I am writing. Therefore I am going to be the smarter one and end this pointless discussion with you.

Before you keep on bashing FR, take a look at these

http://gawker.com/passengers-stuck-on-b ... -512565843

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/f ... htm?csp=34

http://travel.aol.co.uk/2013/12/12/brit ... diversion/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-bruns ... -1.2485732

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/31/trave ... ue-flight/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06 ... hrough-it/


You react like a typical passenger ... which is fine. Just don't pretend you know it all, like a captain.

[Inquirer]

The police is not frequently called, this was as I say a rare occasion, however, as usual you don't read (or don't want to read) what I am writing. Therefore I am going to be the smarter one and end this pointless discussion with you.

I read what you write, but you are unwilling to accept that indeed there's something very wrong when a big airline like ryanair can't even handle a tarmac delay at one of their biggest bases, itself.

As said before, we're not talking UTAir at Novgorod, but Ryanair at Stansted!

[sean1982]

Have a look at the links above ... maybe you should move to Novgorod if you like it so much there.

You react like a typical passenger ... which is fine. Just don't pretend you know it all, like a captain.

[airazurxtror]

what bothers me here is that people like airazurxtror would yell murder and fire if it would have been a classic legacy airline.

Much ado about nothing, as Bill used to say ...
Frankly, delays, mishaps, hitches do happen from time to time, especially in air travel. If nothing more serious happen in your life, consider yourself very lucky indeed.

This happenance is much talked about on this forum - already two pages.
Strangely enough, up to now not one single comment on two others Ryanair news : concerning the public aids at MRS and other airports, and concerning the development in aircraft for the next 15 years ...
Did you say Ryanair bashing ?

[Inquirer]

Have a look at the links above ... maybe you should move to Novgorod if you like it so much there.

No thanks, I spend enough time there already for work.

[Passenger]

On 5th February 2014, the European Parliament has voted for a strength of EU Rule 261/2004, the European legislation that setlles Denied Boarding, Overbookings, Cancellations, Delays. The European Parliament, The European Commission and the member states now have to finalize this into new legislation (a new Rule or an annex to 261/2004). This will probably be done very soon after the European elections (May 2014).

Regarding this particular topic case, the European Parliament has voted that passengers may only be kept for two hours on board an aircraft with closed doors and no take off. After two hours, each single passenger has the right to ask to deboard.

Furthermore, during the same vote in the European Parliament, it was stated that airlines must provide assistance within 30 minutes after a flight encountered some kind of trouble like a last minute cancellation, a flight that arrived at another airport then planned, a flight that is cancelled after boarding or a flight that is delayed more then EU 261/2004 now allows.

The members of the European Parliament have voted for a lot more decisions regarding 261/2004, and some of them are against general safety. I will post that in a different topic later.

[sean1982]

MY conclusion is : this was a RARE situation but you have to admit that following the results THERE are people to blame... not the stewards ( poor them ) but a lack of a captain helping HIS crew, the AIRPORT manager and AIRPORT CONTROLLORS and FR rules concerning free drinks and airco use in RARE situations like this...
( and the guts of the captains for comin' up with original ideas .. )

Everybody his own opinion about the event, .. we are just pax.. you are just crew..
Guess the ones who could have make a difference wasn't you or me ...

CXB

I strongly disagree with the creative guts of the captain part. There is nothing a captain can do if no one communicates with him ... The put him "voor voldongen feiten" (don't know how to say that in english sorry)