{"id":470062,"date":"2026-05-27T19:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/470062\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T19:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:53:10","slug":"senior-pilot-agrees-with-aer-lingus-colleague-that-safety-report-on-beacon-incident-wasnt-mandatory-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/470062\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior pilot agrees with Aer Lingus colleague that safety report on beacon incident wasn\u2019t mandatory \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A senior Aer Lingus<\/a> pilot has agreed with a colleague, who was demoted after the airline decided that he failed to make a safety report when his jet did not link up with a navigation beacon at Dublin Airport, that it was not mandatory to alert the air regulator.<\/p>\n

Captain Padraig Higgins was giving evidence to a hearing into whistleblower penalisation complaints against the airline by veteran Airbus A320 pilot Declan McCabe at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC)<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

McCabe was demoted from his senior post as a captain with training duties down to first officer following a company probe into an 8th June, 2023 incident on a flight into Dublin Airport.<\/p>\n

On the day, the WRC has heard, an autopilot subsystem on the Airbus A320 McCabe was flying as captain failed to connect with a radio guidance beacon for the airport\u2019s newly-opened north runway.<\/p>\n

The airline\u2019s position is that McCabe failed to make a mandatory safety report to the regulator, Air Nav Ireland, about the incident.<\/p>\n

That is denied by McCabe, whose lawyers argued that Aer Lingus\u2019s operating procedures did not require a report to the regulator in the circumstances. <\/p>\n

McCabe has said there was no compromise to safety and he followed the company manual for such an event, so he saw no need for a safety report.<\/p>\n

However, the airline launched a safety probe after receiving a query from Air Nav Ireland about the incident, in which a manager at the State agency remarked that it looked like the jet, with 156 aboard, was on a heading for the wrong runway.<\/p>\n

A disciplinary charge was then brought against McCabe by the company \u2013 a move McCabe alleges was penalisation linked to an earlier dispute involving him and a senior manager at the airline.<\/p>\n

The airline\u2019s barrister has said two senior managing pilots will give evidence contradicting McCabe\u2019s position that the nature of the incident did not make it mandatory to file a report for the regulator.<\/p>\n

McCabe\u2019s case is that the beacon incident was not a \u201cfalse capture\u201d of the radio beacon by the aircraft\u2019s autopilot subsystems, but a \u201cnon-capture\u201d which did not demand a mandatory safety report.<\/p>\n

Higgins, who represented McCabe during a safety probe and disciplinary process, told the WRC on Tuesday there was a \u201cvery fundamental difference\u201d between the two types of incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aircraft is at a safe height. If it gets a false capture, it will descend below a safe height. If not, it won\u2019t descend \u2013 that\u2019s why it\u2019s not a reportable event,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA false localiser capture, it\u2019s a very different animal, an aircraft is potentially descending into the unknown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If it had been the first time it came up, it would have warranted a report, but the company had already issued an internal company notice to pilots, a \u201cCONOTAM\u201d, noting pilot reports of \u201cthe A320s having some kind of issue around navigating into Dublin Airport\u201d.<\/p>\n

Counsel for McCabe, David Byrnes, said his client had put it to Capt Conor Barrett, a senior pilot assigned to a disciplinary investigation, that the Aer Lingus operations manual rendered the question of whether or not to make a report on a non-capture \u201crecommended, but not mandatory\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we got that point through,\u201d Higgins said of the disciplinary process. He said the position taken by the investigator was that: \u201c\u2018should\u2019 is \u2018mandatory to all intents and purposes\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He confirmed to Byrnes there had been no update to the manual which had altered this wording.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s bizarre. \u2018Should\u2019 is \u2018should\u2019. The reason it says that is we are expected to use our judgment, and I believe in a similar position I wouldn\u2019t have reported it either,\u201d Capt Higgins said. <\/p>\n

Counsel for the respondent, Tom Mallon, put it to Higgins that it would be a \u201cserious matter\u201d if the jet was established on an approach to the \u201cwrong runway\u201d. Higgins disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very simple excursion through the localiser. It was nothing more than that. It happens every day of the week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He added that if the jet had been on course for the wrong runway, it would have been \u201cseen very quickly\u201d. It was \u201ca day like today\u201d and the aircrew \u201cintervened and turned the aircraft back manually\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Higgins added the existence of the CONOTAM \u201cwould make one suspect it is likely an aircraft problem\u201d.<\/p>\n

An ex-colleague of McCabe\u2019s, former A320 captain Tom O\u2019Riordan, also gave evidence and said the \u201cnon-capture and re-manoeuvre\u201d events were something he had experienced flying A320 jets for Aer Lingus. O\u2019Riordan said he did not consider them to be an incident requiring a mandatory report to the regulator and that he had never been spoken to about any need to report them. <\/p>\n

Giving evidence last December, McCabe said: \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<\/p>\n

\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 … I know that, because I was flying the aircraft,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201chumiliating\u201d to return to the cockpit as a first officer after his demotion and said he had been subjected to \u201ca direct attack\u201d on his career, reputation and family.<\/p>\n

Adjudication officer John Harraghy adjourned the case until mid-June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior Aer Lingus pilot has agreed with a colleague, who was demoted after the airline decided that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[601,72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-470062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-aer-lingus","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470062","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=470062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}