{"id":183730,"date":"2025-12-09T22:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/183730\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T22:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:55:07","slug":"air-traffic-control-thought-whistleblower-pilots-jet-headed-for-wrong-runway-wrc-told-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/183730\/","title":{"rendered":"Air traffic control thought whistleblower pilot\u2019s jet headed for \u2018wrong runway\u2019, WRC told \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Aer Lingus<\/a> pilot pursuing a claim for whistleblower penalisation has said he and his first officer were placed \u201cunder duress\u201d during a safety investigation to attribute a navigation incident to human error instead of a \u201ctechnical difficulty with the aircraft\u201d. <\/p>\n

It was after an air traffic control manager formed the view that the Airbus A321neo jet, flying from Munich with 156 passengers and crew on board, was on course to land at the wrong runway at Dublin Airport<\/a> on June 8th, 2023. <\/p>\n

Aer Lingus is contesting statutory complaints brought by the pilot, 53-year-old Declan McCabe, under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014, the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005, and the Payment of Wages Act 1997 at the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC), following his demotion from captain to first officer. <\/p>\n

Airline management concluded Mr McCabe had failed to submit a timely air safety report and gave \u201cinaccurate information\u201d to the national air traffic control authority, AirNav Ireland, after his aircraft initially failed to pick up a \u201clocaliser\u201d beacon on approach to the airport. Mr McCabe\u2019s stance is that the incident was a \u201cnon-event\u201d and he decided no report was warranted. <\/p>\n

Cross-examining the complainant on Tuesday, Tom Mallon BL, appearing instructed by Arthur Cox, put it to him that an air traffic control station manager had reported: \u201c\u2018On playback it appears the aircraft was establishing [an approach to] runway 10-R,\u2019\u201d Mr Mallon said \u2013 Dublin Airport\u2019s south runway. <\/p>\n

The plane was meant to land at the north runway, the tribunal heard. <\/p>\n

\u201cWould you not accept if someone was established on the wrong runway, that would be a safety issue?\u201d counsel asked. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very broad question, but not necessarily,\u201d Mr McCabe said. <\/p>\n

Mr Mallon said the complainant later took the stance that the safety investigator, Capt Conor Nolan, had \u201cmore plausible causes\u201d for the incident to pursue apart from mis-selection, the question of whether the flight crew put in the wrong runway beacon frequency.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018A direct attack on my wife, my family, my career and my reputation\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cEvidence available to Capt Nolan was not provided to me at that meeting. It was withheld,\u201d he said. He said this related to \u201cissues\u201d with a subsystem of the plane\u2019s navigation system involved in capturing the signal. <\/p>\n

Mr Mallon put it to him he had \u201cagreed that the likely cause of this problem was human error\u201d in the safety investigation. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt we were under duress to drive the investigation down the route of pilot mis-selection and not a technical difficulty with the aircraft,\u201d Mr McCabe said. <\/p>\n

Counsel for the complainant David Byrnes BL, instructed by Setanta Solicitors, took issue with his client being questioned on a \u201cbare assertion\u201d in the disciplinary investigator\u2019s report that Mr McCabe\u2019s jet \u201cwent through the localiser for 19 seconds before the course correction\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat point was put to me, but not backed up by any evidence,\u201d Mr McCabe said. \u201cAer Lingus are very much pushing the idea that air traffic control intervened. We had turned the aircraft before [they] had given us the heading 030.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI was there, I know that, because I was flying the aircraft,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

Adjudicator John Harraghy adjourned the hearing overnight. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Aer Lingus pilot pursuing a claim for whistleblower penalisation has said he and his first officer were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[601,97351,14231,72,11900,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-183730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aer-lingus","tag-airnav-ireland","tag-arthur-cox","tag-business","tag-dublin-airport","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}