Ryanair facing huge bill for pilot retraining and aircraft overhaul
RYANAIR faces a multimillioneuro bill for aircraft maintenance and pilot retraining if it does not get the bulk of its fleet back in the skies this summer.
The fleet of the budget airline, Europe’s largest, has been largely grounded since late March.
The airline said this week it hoped to open up to 40% of its schedule by July 1, but on Friday announced it would be cutting 250 office-based staff in Dublin, London, Madrid and Wroclaw, Poland.
And sources say that if it does not get most of its 450-plus aircraft and pilots in the skies soon, it faces a huge and costly logistical nightmare. ‘Parking up a plane is not like parking a car,’ said the senior source. ‘There is a whole heap of maintenance that has to go on while it’s not in use.
‘If that period goes longer than 90 days, which is what Ryanair is now facing with some of its aircraft, then a major aircraft overhaul is needed which is huge money and takes time as the manufacturer of the aircraft has to get involved.’
The grounding of flights and the absence of tourism and travel also has implications for pilots, who must keep up their flying hours in order to maintain their licence.
‘If the pilots haven’t flown for a period of up to 90 days, they can just spend a few hours in the flight simulator and do three take offs and three landings and they’re ready to go,’ the source said.
‘But if it goes over 90 days, then they are looking at a major retraining with, again, the manufacturer of the aircraft getting involved.
‘These are all things that Michael O’Leary naturally wants to avoid.’
And because of Ryanair’s size and multiple tourist routes, it is more exposed to the crisis than some other airlines.
‘Aer Lingus has neatly got around the problem by rotating its aircraft and crews on the handful of routes it’s still running,’ the source said. ‘But Ryanair is 10 times the size and can’t do that.’
Ryanair will carry fewer than 100 million passengers for the full year, 35% lower than its target before coronavirus.
The airline ran just 600 scheduled flights in April – including rescue and medical flights on behalf of various EU governments – compared with the 75,501 it had been expected to operate before the Covid-19 outbreak.
However, flight tracking data collated in the UK shows that Ryanair has being trying to circumvent the problem of keeping its aircraft moving by operating some ‘ghost flights’.
Of 47 aircraft surveyed last month, it showed that all bar one of the jets had been flown in recent days. Of the 47, 35 had made loops of an airport, while the remaining 11 aircraft had operated a service at least once every four days.
A Ryanair spokesperson told an aviation magazine that the ‘ghost flights’ were necessary. However, the decision to keep flying planes without passengers will adversely affect the airline’s carbon footprint and anger environmentalists.
Ryanair’s plan to increase flights in July is subject to restrictions on travel between EU countries being lifted and public health measures being put in place in airports.
The operations will take place from most of the company’s 80 bases across Europe, although frequencies will be lower than previously on main routes.
‘Parking up a plane isn’t like parking a car’
Operating some ‘ghost flights’