An Aer Lingus pilot who claims he was sacked for blowing the whistle on alleged \u201ctoxic\u201d fume events on commercial jets has described how he believes he came to suffer a brain injury while in command of a flight three years ago. <\/p>\n
Former Airbus A320 captain Tom O\u2019Riordan was giving evidence on Monday as his legal team began setting out its case in one of the longest-running whistleblower penalisation cases to proceed at the employment tribunal. <\/p>\n
Aer Lingus strongly denies that any crew or passengers have been put at risk and says it dealt with O\u2019Riordan and his concerns properly. <\/p>\n
He said he and his first officer detected an \u201cexhaust smell\u201d while preparing an Airbus A320, registration EI-DEN, in advance of a return flight to Shannon Airport on June 4th, 2023. <\/p>\n
An Aer Lingus engineer reported an oil leak at the auxiliary power unit, or APU, and disconnected the machine, which was to supply electric and pneumatic power while the main engines were off, he said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Riordan said the smell \u201cdissipated\u201d after that and that he took it \u201con good faith\u201d that the aircraft was ready to go. <\/p>\n
The flight to Shannon was \u201cuneventful\u201d, but on the return leg, while descending back to Heathrow with a full load of passengers, the \u201cexhaust\u201d odour returned, he said. <\/p>\n
At first, the flight crew were set to return to Dublin as passengers, but were told the following morning by the company flight operations department that EI-DEN was \u201cserviceable\u201d and they were to fly it back, said the complainant. <\/p>\n
The aircraft\u2019s technical log recorded a \u201cdecontamination procedure\u201d on the jet\u2019s air conditioning, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would have accepted the aircraft in good faith that the engineers had performed their duties as required,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
On descent into Dublin, \u201cthe fumes returned again\u201d, he said, \u201ca wet old smelly sports sock type of smell\u201d. <\/p>\n
He said he felt unwell during final approach and developed a \u201cpiercing headache\u201d and nausea while taxiing. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe left midsection of my face was numb and my eye was frozen \u2026 I felt clammy and faint, I still had the headache and nausea, and this metallic taste in my mouth,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI actually thought I was going to die; it was really bad, really, really bad,\u201d said O\u2019Riordan. <\/p>\n
He spent four nights in hospital after being taken off the flight deck by paramedics, he said. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Riordan told the WRC in 2024 he suffered \u201cchronic fatigue syndrome and brain damage\u201d due to \u201cexposure to toxic fumes\u201d on the flight. He is now pursuing a personal injury action in the High Court. <\/p>\n
Aer Lingus\u2019s legal team said O\u2019Riordan had engaged in \u201ca campaign of disruption\u201d while out sick, including the alleged posting of \u201cfalsehoods and untruths\u201d on social media, mounting a picket on its offices, and a hunger strike. <\/p>\n
He was sacked from his \u20ac153,000 a year post after facing disciplinary action in relation to the activity, the tribunal has heard. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Aer Lingus pilot who claims he was sacked for blowing the whistle on alleged \u201ctoxic\u201d fume events…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[601,61,60,43,1962,6465],"class_list":["post-624719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-aer-lingus","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-work","tag-workplace-relations-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624719","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=624719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}