Fear on Ryanair flight

Mayo man’s fear on Ryanair flight


Neill O’Neill

A HOLIDAY to Portugal was a welcome break for Mulranny couple Michael and Mary Grealis, until it went wrong at the worst possible time – as their flight home was hurtling down the runway during take-off.
The couple were sitting in their seats on the Ryanair aircraft on Saturday, September 13 last, when they got a strong smell in the plane as it was accelerating down the runway. With memories of the doomed Spanair flight that crashed during take-off in Madrid in August with the loss of 154 lives still in passengers’ minds, Michael recalls that panic quickly set in on board.
“Next thing there was awful commotion down the back,” Michael told The Mayo News. “The people down there were gone mad roaring and shouting ‘stop, stop stop’ and pressing call buttons because the smell was ten times worse there – it was a type of burning smell.”
The control tower and the pilot were in contact in these few seconds and, according to Michael, the pilot just had time to abort the take-off.
Earlier that evening, passengers were informed when they arrived at the airport in Faro for their 8.50pm flight to Shannon that there was a problem with the plane, as birds had flown into one of the engines on the incoming leg of the flight.
“We saw the fire engines around the plane when we arrived at the gate to board but didn’t pay any heed to this,” said Michael, “and when we pulled up at the terminal after the aborted take-off we couldn’t get off the plane because the wheels were red hot with smoke coming out of them from braking hard at such a speed.”
After disembarking, the passengers were given little information, and it was around 11pm before they knew there was no plane to bring them home.
“We were there all night moving from bench to bench trying to get comfortable and didn’t get as much as a cup of tea or anything,” Michael recalled. “There was no Ryanair staff there at all.”
The following morning their flight was due to leave at 9.30am and at 7.45am they asked if they would be travelling home on the same aircraft. With no guarantee forthcoming that the plane had been changed, people were saying they would not board the aircraft, and some passengers flew home via Brussels, Cork and England on different flights – for which they paid extra – to avoid going on the same plane.
“It was the same jet but just that they left it on the tarmac overnight. The Portuguese police told us to get an assurance off the pilot that all was ok, but he wouldn’t come in and speak to us,” Michael said. “There was young people, old people and parents with small children, and they were going berserk because they were afraid for their lives.”
At 1.20pm on Sunday the passengers departed Faro – on a plane that had not been cleaned between flights.
“The pilot came on and said that all the problems had been fixed and that we could have free refreshments, but that amounted to a mars bar and a can of coke – which was their way of saying sorry for leaving us in an airport for 20 hours,” said Michael.
“We got no questions answered about the whole thing. There was one Irish girl among the crew and the staff were sound but it was a fairly apprehensive flight home, and there was a lot of tense faces.
“I will never travel with Ryanair again. I had to pay for a hotel in Shannon which I was supposed to be in on Saturday night but I wasn’t, because I was lying on a bench in Faro Airport.”
Michael tried to get answers from Ryanair in Dublin, but they just kept passing him around. “They seem to have no accountability for their extraordinarily mean and dangerous actions, and once you give them your money they don’t give a hoot about you, your comfort or experience with them, or your safety,” he said.
He added that the worst thing about the experience was the feeling of fear, ‘knowing that you cannot control your own safety and that your life is in the hands of others’.