Cleared for take-off? scrambles to train

Under-fire airline doubles up on training flights as bosses

CRISIS- HIT Ryanair has been secretly training pilots at Prestwick Airport – after throwing the travel plans of countless Scots into chaos.

The airline has massively racked- up its flight training programme after being hit by a crippling shortage of pilots.

It is hoping to bolster flight crew staff numbers as quickly as possible, after cancelling vital flights between Scotland and London over the winter.

Last week The Sunday Post watched as Ryanair attempted to put the turbulence of recent days behind it by doubling its trainee flight numbers.

Fresh new recruits were put through their paces at Prestwick Airport, where they made repeated take- offs and landings in Boeing 737s, their flight patterns picked up by radars showing them doing loops of the Ayrshire transport hub.

The scramble to train the new wave of pilots followed Ryanair’s cancellation of 18,000 commercial flights between November this year and March 2018, affecting 400,000 people, who have accused the firm of “cancelling Christmas”.

On Wednesday last week, two Ryanair Boeing 737s practised flying manoeuvres for hours at Prestwick Airport.

One after another, the two planes flew off the Prestwick runway and circled around the airport in a loop before returning to the ground briefly – they then repeated the circuit six times before swapping pilots.

This continued throughout the morning until 12pm, when the planes refuelled before resuming.

There were multiple would- be pilots on the jet, taking it in turn to complete circuits of Prestwick.

Each year Ryanair puts pilots through “base training” at Prestwick and East Midlands Airport to prepare them for commercial flying.

Base training is one of the final stages of becoming a commercial pilot, where trainees get to practise flying commercial airliners for real, many after spending countless hours in simulators.

Each pilot is required to complete six circuits, involving take- offs and landings, without any passengers on board.

In previous years Ryanair has normally used just one aircraft for this type of training.

An experienced pilot said: “They would only ever use one plane when doing base training.”

The fact there were two planes on Wednesday suggests the Irish carrier is desperate to overcome its very public flight cancellation problem.

A senior aviation source – who works as a captain for a rival airline – said: “They’re clearly making a real effort. I’d describe it as a noticeable stepping up. The number of training flights they’re running suggests they’re trying to augment the number of flight deck crew they have as quickly as possible, while adhering to the training standard and requirements.”

While the would- be pilots were learning their manoeuvres, angry Ryanair customers were finding out their flights had been cancelled.

Edina Day, 24, was booked to travel from Glasgow to London Stansted with her oneyear- old daughter and partner Adrian MacLeod to see Edina’s family at Christmas.

Edina said: “My family live in London so