Ryanair crew criticised over Stansted flight problem
15.12.09
An air accident investigation report has criticised Ryanair crew after nine oxygen masks failed to deploy, and they were reduced to banging on the cockpit door to alert the pilot during a serious incident on a flight from Dublin to Stansted in September 2008.
Anxious cabin crew members used ID cards in a vain effort to prise open the units where masks which had not come down were stored, according to the report of the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit. The report criticises the flight crew for electing to continue climbing and pressurising the cabin when the nature of a problem arising from a bump heard during take-off was not known.
A sudden loss of cabin pressure was triggered when the flight crew carried out checks after the tail of the aircraft hit the runway during take-off. Doing this without fully appreciating the consequences was a contributory cause of the incident, the report adds.
Ryanair, which has accepted the findings, has already made changes to its training procedures in response to the incident. It said the report showed that the tail-strike was a ‘minor scrape’ and said the aircraft returned to Dublin as a precautionary measure.
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