Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

So there is confidence in the aircraft in industry, at least.

It's also possible that Ryanair believes that a crash wouldn't damage their business significantly. Ryanair competes almost entirely on price, to the point of removing literally everything they can in order to stay the cheapest option. A decade ago they considered removing the seats from their planes (https://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/jul/01/stand-up-for-r...) as well as plans for things like making passengers pay to use the bathrooms. More recently Ryanair refused to remove middle seats in order to help stop the spread of Corona virus.

I would be very reluctant to believe Ryanair believe in the 737 Max for any reason besides cost. Safety is not a priority for them beyond meeting the absolute minimum requirements necessary to fly.

View on HN

Michael O'Leary will say anything to drum up press. Those comments were never plans - just free advertising.

> Safety is not a priority for them beyond meeting the absolute minimum requirements necessary to fly.

This is absolute nonsense. Safety is paramount at Ryanair - their reputation in industry is that they have the strictest standards of any airline operating in Europe, low-cost or not.

This is simply your own bias showing through.

It's also ridiculous to state that a crash wouldn't impact their business.

This is simply your own bias showing through.

Yes. And your post is your bias showing through. That's OK though. That's how opinions work. A post on HN that isn't a strict statement of fact is always going to be affected by the posters biases. Discussion forums simply couldn't work otherwise.

Saying someone is biased is not a damning indictment of how terrible they are. It just means they've been affected by, and formed opinions based on, what has happened to them.

It's also ridiculous to state that a crash wouldn't impact their business.

If you just ignore the "significantly" bit, sure.

The idea that Ryanair don't take safety seriously isn't an opinion - it's simply wrong. Their record and policies on safety are a matter of record.

> If you just ignore the "significantly" bit, sure.

Okay, it's also ridiculous to state that a crash wouldn't significantly impact their business.

Your comments on this are so outlandish that I wonder if they're made in good faith?

Your comments on this are so outlandish that I wonder if they're made in good faith?

I could suggest you're being paid to defend Ryanair online, but I can't imagine Ryanair paying someone to do that. They don't care about their reputation enough. Kind of like how they aren't too bothered about how it looks in the media when their planes catch fire or have to be intercepted by fighter jets.

And we could suggest you’re being paid to spread FUD about Ryanair. I hate flying with them as much as the next guy, but saying they don’t care about safety is demonstrably wrong, their safety record is one of the best around. Just because it looks like they furnished the interior at the local Lidl doesn’t mean they don’t have strict maintenance and operating procedures.

>> Safety is paramount at Ryanair - their reputation in industry is that they have the strictest standards of any airline operating in Europe, low-cost or not.

Source?

This shows otherwise.

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-safest-airlines-in-2020-...

That article is the same listicle from AirlineRatings shared by another poster below. AirlineRatings themselves are just a website, not any authority, but their own rating for Ryanair is equal the same "seven stars" they award to the top 10 in that list: https://www.airlineratings.com/ratings/ryanair/

So there is no other source to back up OPs claim that Rynanair the safest in Europe?

The source is their Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair#Accidents_and_incident...

Compare this to any other airline on the "safest" list. All EU airlines are extremely safe - it's a highly regulated market. None have the record or reputation of Ryanair, especially not at the scale they operate.

I cannot see any comparison there.

>> None have the record or reputation of Ryanair, especially not at the scale they operate.

Again, source?

Ryanair is pretty good on safety (my brother is a pilot with them). However they do absolutely everything to push costs down. MAX is a significant saving in fuel, which is one of the biggest costs.

MAX is not the only option to achieve fuel efficiency. In fact, MAX is the failed answer from Boeing to the fuel efficiency problem.

Airbus has NEO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family

"After a year in service, Lufthansa confirmed the 20% efficiency gain per passenger with up to 180 seats, along with reduced noise and CO₂ emissions.[26] Operators confirm the 15% per seat fuel-burn savings even counterbalanced by the added weight on short sectors, which can rise to 16–17% on longer routes and to 20% or more for Lufthansa with 180 passengers up from 168 with two more seat rows"

Ryanair only fly the 737 Type Rating, so the A320neo wasn't a viable option for them.

"Launched on 1 December 2010, it made its first flight on 25 September 2014 and it was introduced by Lufthansa on 25 January 2016."

"On 8 September 2014, Ryanair made a commitment to order 100 new Boeing 737 MAX 8s (plus options for an additional 100) for delivery from 2019.[75]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair#Fleet_development

I think you're missing the point. Ryanair have only flown the 737 Type Rating since their inception, not solely the 737-8200s they have on order.

The only non-737 Type Rated aircraft in the corporate fleet are the A320-200s that came with the aquisition of Lauda Air, which are set to be replaced by 737-8200s.

The A320neo was never a viable option for Ryanair.

I also expect Ryanair got a hefty discount on increasing their orders for the max

No offense, but your brother being a pilot with them seems irrelevant on whether they are 'pretty good with safety' or not.

Working there is a pretty big bias

Who else (short of the CEO) would you consider more qualified to comment on the safety culture in a company?

Pilots seem uniquely qualified to judge whether a company is prioritizing safety or short-term profit.

For example, a pilot will know whether the company incentivizes pilots to overlook issues to make a flight happen or whether it encourages a safety culture of speaking up and staying on the ground when something comes up, or whether they fly with the absolute minimum of fuel permitted or a little bit more (and whether that is a safety issue or not).

In Ryanair's case that bias may run in the opposite direction to that which you imply: https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cqwdgxed80gt/ryanair-pilots-...

I dunno, there's some jobs you see from the inside you think "wow, this is a disaster" but from the outside it looks fine because that's what the company projects. (Anecdotally, a friend of mine gets horror stories from his brother, who's a mechanic with a very large airline)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com