{"id":503061,"date":"2026-06-16T20:08:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/503061\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T20:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T20:08:09","slug":"spelling-error-reversed-meaning-of-finding-in-aer-lingus-discipline-inquiry-wrc-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/503061\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Spelling error\u2019 reversed meaning of finding in Aer Lingus discipline inquiry, WRC hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A senior Aer Lingus<\/a> manager has told a tribunal how his investigation report seemed to state he agreed with a demoted pilot\u2019s reading of an airline manual because of a \u201cspelling mistake on my part\u201d. <\/p>\n

The pilot, Declan McCabe, was reduced in rank from training captain to flight officer in 2024 and told he would \u201cnever\u201d be allowed to conduct training again. <\/p>\n

Hearings on his complaints under the Protected Disclosures Act, the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act and the Payment of Wages Act are continuing at the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC).<\/p>\n

McCabe disputes the company\u2019s view he was obliged to file a safety report after the Airbus<\/a> he was flying into Dublin Airport<\/a> on June 8th, 2023, failed to link up with a radio navigation beacon for the new north runway \u2013 and broke its trust and confidence by failing to make such a report in a timely fashion. <\/p>\n

He was in command of a flight on an Airbus A321neo jet, with a first officer under instruction, flying from Munich with 156 passengers and crew on board at the time.<\/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 tribunal heard how a senior manager in flight operations, Colm Wynne, wrote to McCabe on June 14th that year about an inquiry from Air Nav Ireland, but McCabe wrote directly to the regulator without copying Wynne on the correspondence.<\/p>\n

McCabe said he was concerned about \u201cretribution\u201d from Wynne about filing safety reports arising from an earlier dispute with his employer years earlier. <\/p>\n

He filed the report on June 23rd after being asked to do so by Aer Lingus safety chief Conor Nolan \u2013 the only manager with the authority to ask him for a retrospective report, his legal team has argued. <\/p>\n

Another senior pilot, Padraig Higgins, along with another former colleague of McCabe\u2019s, Tom O\u2019Riordan, both said in evidence to the WRC in May they agreed with the complainant. <\/p>\n

The parties dispute the most likely reason for the event, which was ultimately determined to be a \u201clow severity\u201d occurrence. <\/p>\n

Conor Barrett, the airline\u2019s chief technical pilot and the investigator assigned to the disciplinary case involving McCabe, gave evidence to the tribunal on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

He said there was a finding in his investigation report \u2013 quoted previously to the WRC \u2013 where he stated: \u201cA review of the safety manual and the operating manual indicates a strong structure to believe this viewpoint.\u201d <\/p>\n

This was in reference to McCabe\u2019s view that the company safety manual left it up to his judgment to file a report on the June 8th flight, the tribunal was told. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an error on that page,\u201d Barrett said, directing the tribunal to the word \u201cbelieve\u201d in the passage. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a spelling mistake on my part, and it should have said \u2018belie\u2019,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Tom Mallon, for Aer Lingus, said it meant the \u201cvery opposite\u201d to how it appeared to read. <\/p>\n

Barrett said his view on the matter was \u201cfirm\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is absolutely no doubt that an ASR [air safety report] should have been submitted on the day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you say it\u2019s mandatory?\u201d Mallon asked him. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d need to pull out the manual, but effectively there are lines in there that state if there are issues with the approach or landing, or with crew performance that could have led to an unsafe situation, a report is warranted,\u201d Barrett said. <\/p>\n

He said McCabe gave \u201ca multitude of explanations\u201d, including a problem with the aircraft, with the radio beacon transmitter and possible interference from similar radio beacons at Baldonnell. <\/p>\n

He said if any of these had been the case then they would have required a safety report. <\/p>\n

David Byrnes, for McCabe, said there was \u201can attempt to post-justify the situation\u201d and present matters \u201cas if Captain McCabe was armed with all that technical information coming out of the cockpit on June 8th\u201d. <\/p>\n

The case has been adjourned overnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior Aer Lingus manager has told a tribunal how his investigation report seemed to state he agreed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[601,125,11900,42,43,40,38,41,39,6465],"class_list":["post-503061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-aer-lingus","tag-airbus","tag-dublin-airport","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503061","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=503061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503061\/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=503061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}