Ryanair fires crew for ‘staging’ f loor sleep
THE Ryanair cabin crew pictured lying on a Spanish airport office floor last month after becoming stranded by bad weather have been fired, the airline has confirmed.
The image was ‘staged’ by six crew members in protest at their treatment at Malaga Airport in Spain in the early hours of October 14. They were part of a group of eight pilots and 16 cabin crew based in Portugal who say they were forced to spend several hours in the room after landing at Malaga just after midnight following diversions caused by Hurricane Leslie.
Yesterday a Ryanair spokesman confirmed: ‘All six cabin crew members in Porto were dismissed on Monday... for breach of contract on grounds of gross misconduct, after staging a fake photograph to support a false claim (widely reported in international media outlets) that they were “forced to sleep on the floor” of the Malaga crew room.’ Ryanair said this was ‘behaviour which damaged their employer’s reputation’.
Earlier, Luciana Passo, head of the SNPVAC cabin crew union in Portugal, had confirmed the sackings.
He said: ‘Ryanair thinks it was harmed by the publication of that photograph when it was no more than a show of the crew members’ justified feeling of indignation.’
Promising a swift union response to the airline’s ‘awful’ decision, he added: ‘The union’s legal team are now dealing with the matter.’
The budget airline complained the photo had been staged after union representatives claimed last month that 24 crew members spent more than seven hours in the office sharing seven chairs and the floor before they were taken to a VIP area to sleep on shared sofas.
Ryanair released CCTV video footage showing how the crew lay down on the floor to pose for the picture that went viral online.
‘Justified feeling of indignation’