I sitt svar tillbakavisar Ryanair också påståendet att piloter inte skulle få tillräckligt mycket sömn mellan passen.

Enligt bolaget får piloterna visserligen inte betalt för övertid men schemat ligger så att övertid inte spelar någon roll när det gäller tätheten mellan passen eftersom de som jobbat kväll börjar först på kvällen även dagen efter.

Så här ser Ryanair svar ut i sin helhet:

Dear Sir/Madam

I refer to your article published today on the Svt.se website, entitled ‘Stress and intimidation culture of Ryanair’, which contains a number of false and highly defamatory claims concerning Ryanair. As you have not bothered to contact Ryanair in advance of your publication, please now take account of the following facts:

Contractor pilots are paid on a scheduled block hour basis, and if a flight is delayed, the scheduled block hours and the payments don’t change.

Since all Ryanair rosters are based on banks of early flights or banks of late flights, it makes no difference if flights are delayed (although Ryanair has very few delays) because pilots landing late at night are not scheduled to fly again until the following afternoon and we always exceed the minimum rest requirements.

All Ryanair pilots have a legal duty to declare themselves unfit to fly if they are sick, and they regularly do so.

In fact, the rate of such declarations last year was slightly higher among our contractor pilots than our direct employee pilots. If any contractor is unfit to fly on any day, they can make up these flights during the following days, weeks or months as long as they do not exceed their legal maximum of 900 flight hours per year (approx. 18 hours per week).

The claim that pilots ‘fall asleep’ on Ryanair’s short flights is simply untrue, false and yet another invention.

Please amend your article to reflect Ryanair’s factual position in these matters. Should you fail to do so as a matter of extreme urgency, we will be left with no choice but to refer this matter to our lawyers as we will not allow our industry-leading safety reputation to be tarnished.

Yours sincerely,

Robin

Robin Kiely

Head of Communications, Ryanair