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Ryanair threatens to sue Swedish newspaper

Ryanair has threatened to sue a Swedish newspaper for publishing allegations about poor working conditions for pilots at the budget airline.

Ryanair threatens to sue Swedish newspaper

In an article published on Tuesday, the Södermanlands Nyheter (SN) newspaper described “stressed-out pilots who are forced to fly for free”, based on accounts given to the paper by Ryanair pilots who wished to remain anonymous.

The pilots described Ryanair as having a “culture of fear” that resulted in pilots choosing not to take sick leave out of fear they might get fired.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve flown with colleagues that are so tired that they can’t keep their eyes open and need to sleep for ten minutes during a flight,” one pilot told SN, explaining he wasn’t describing scheduled “power naps”.

Part of the problem, according to the pilot, is that Ryanair pilots are paid for flight times laid out in a schedule. If a flight is delayed, and a pilot ends up flying outside the time allotted according to the schedule, the pilot in essence flies without getting paid, the pilot claimed.

In an email to SN, portions of which were published by the paper, Ryanair spokesman Robin Kiely rejected the allegations, claiming the anonymous pilots had “made up a bunch of garbage”.

Kiely explained that all Ryanair pilots are legally obligated to file a report if they are too sick to fly and denied that a pilot had ever been fired for calling in sick.

He also rejected the pilot’s claims that colleagues fell asleep in the cockpit, calling them “untrue, false, and completely made up”.

Kiely tried to stop the publication of the article, suggesting that Ryanair would sue SN if it ran the story

“If you publish some of these claims we’re going to launch legal proceedings against your newspaper,” he wrote.

The efforts to muffle the newspaper left editor Göran Carstorp incredulous.

“It’s completely unbelievable. They want to silence a debate about the safety of flying,” he told Sveriges Television (SVT).

A representative for the Swedish pilots’ union Svensk Pilotförening told SVT that the account published by SN is in line with information he’s heard from other Ryainair pilots, adding that some have secretly joined the union.

“The company has a tyrannical construction and works to frighten its employees,” union representative Anders Kjellgren told SVT.

“That’s why it’s so cheap to fly with Ryanair.”

The Local/dl

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RYANAIR

UPDATE: Ryanair passenger jet makes emergency landing in Berlin over ‘fake bomb threat’

Polish police said Monday they were investigating a fake bomb threat that forced a Ryanair passenger plane travelling from Dublin to Krakow to make an emergency landing in Berlin.

UPDATE: Ryanair passenger jet makes emergency landing in Berlin over 'fake bomb threat'
A Ryanair flight making an emergency landing

The flight from Dublin to Krakow made the unexpected diversion after a reported bomb threat, German newspaper Bild Zeitung said.

“We were notified by the Krakow airport that an airport employee received a phone call saying an explosive device had been planted on the plane,” said regional police spokesman, Sebastian Glen.

“German police checked and there was no device, no bomb threat at all. So we know this was a false alarm,” he told AFP on Monday.

“The perpetrator has not been detained, but we are doing everything possible to establish their identity,” Glen added, saying the person faces eight years in prison.

With 160 people on board, the flight arrived at the Berlin Brandenburg airport shortly after 8 pm Sunday, remaining on the tarmac into early Monday morning.

A Berlin police spokesperson said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The passengers will resume their journey to Poland on board a spare aeroplane,” she told AFP, without giving more precise details for the alert.

The flight was emptied with the baggage also searched and checked with sniffer dogs, German media reported.

The passengers were not able to continue their journey until early Monday morning shortly before 4:00 am. The federal police had previously classified the situation as harmless. The Brandenburg police are now investigating the case.

Police said that officers had completed their security checks “without any danger being detected”.

“The Ryanair plane that made an emergency landed reported an air emergency and was therefore immediately given a landing permit at BER,” airport spokesman Jan-Peter Haack told Bild.

“The aircraft is currently in a safe position,” a spokeswoman for the police told the newspaper.

The incident comes a week after a Ryanair flight was forced to divert to Belarus, with a passenger — a dissident journalist — arrested on arrival.

And in July last year, another Ryanair plane from Dublin to Krakow was forced to make an emergency landing in London after a false bomb threat.

READ ALSO: Germany summons Belarus envoy over forced Ryanair landing

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