Aer Lingus\u2019s chief pilot has said he\u2019s going to consider beginning the process of assessing whether a demoted senior pilot can have his rank as captain returned \u201cin the coming weeks\u201d.<\/p>\n
John Kelly was giving evidence at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on complaints alleging whistleblower penalisation brought by the pilot, Declan McCabe.<\/p>\n
McCabe was demoted following a company probe into the incident at Dublin Airport, when an Airbus A321neo jet, flying from Munich with 156 passengers and crew aboard, failed to link up with the radio navigation beacon for the new north runway on June 8th, 2023.<\/p>\n
McCabe said what happened was \u201ca non-event from a flying point of view\u201d and that relevant Aer Lingus manual left it up to his judgment to decide whether to report it.<\/p>\n
The airline contends he failed to comply with his safety reporting duties and was sanctioned on foot of a fair disciplinary process.<\/p>\n
The parties dispute whether the most likely reason for the event, which was ultimately determined to be a \u201clow severity\u201d occurrence.<\/p>\n
The tribunal heard McCabe commanded 16 flights between the June 8th, 2023, event and being taken off flying duties on July 4th, pending the safety investigation.<\/p>\n
Giving evidence, Kelly told counsel for the respondent, Tom Mallon BL, that he was not aware of correspondence sent the day before by McCabe to Aer Lingus CEO Lynn Embleton \u2013 which McCabe alleges was a protected disclosure. The witness said it had no influence on his decision to take the complainant off flight duties.<\/p>\n
David Byrnes BL, for the complainant, put it to the witness that while he had found it necessary to suspend McCabe pending the outcome of the safety probe, he had not done so for other safety investigations. Counsel cited an Air Accident Investigation Unit case in which a \u201closs of control on approach to Dublin\u201d was identified.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat pilot was not stood down,\u201d counsel said. Kelly confirmed this.<\/p>\n
Byrnes put it to Kelly a more appropriate time to initiate the suspension was when the view had been formed that McCabe was refusing to file one. Kelly disagreed.<\/p>\n
In another incident there was a \u201ctail strike\u201d when an Aer Lingus jet landed in Washington DC \u2013 costing the airline \u201cmillions\u201d and bringing about another AAIU probe, counsel said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas that pilot put at a safe distance from any investigation?\u201d counsel asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe so,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are actual serious incidents with the flying of the aircraft \u2026 and yet a low severity non-report allegation is enough to put my client at a distance. Do you see the problem?\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelly said there had been a \u201cvery timely safety report\u201d in the case of the second incident.<\/p>\n
Kelly was also asked whether he had any doubt that McCabe would file a safety report now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not harbour any doubt that he would,\u201d Kelly said. He said he expected to review McCabe\u2019s position \u201cover the next coming number of weeks, six to eight weeks\u201d.<\/p>\n
The case continues on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aer Lingus\u2019s chief pilot has said he\u2019s going to consider beginning the process of assessing whether a demoted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[601,72,61,60,6465],"class_list":["post-502264","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\/502264","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=502264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}