Aer Lingus pilot says ‘subterfuge’ on safety report ‘an effort to mislead the authorities’

The Aer Lingus pilot sacked for taking to social media in an “awareness campaign” about alleged toxic fume leaks on passenger jets has branded the actions of company management “an attack on safety in aviation”. He said he believed the airline’s safety management processes were “compromised” and that there had been an attempt to “mislead the authorities” about an alleged incident on a ferry flight on July 5th, 2023, in which he claimed he was “poisoned” by a fume leak.Veteran Airbus A320 pilot Tom O’Riordan concluded his primary evidence on Thursday at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) after testifying for four days. He was sacked in 2024 after 14 months off sick.He has accused the airline of penalising him as a whistleblower for reporting his concerns. READ MOREA series of online posts for which O’Riordan was subject to disciplinary action were made between mid-March and mid-June 2024, the tribunal heard. They included a number of internal Aer Lingus files, along with correspondence pertaining to the disciplinary process and letters he had received from managers. O’Riordan told the WRC he had not been satisfied with the conclusion reached by the airline when it closed off the air safety report into the flight on June 5th, 2023, in August that year. He said this was done without his involvement and did not go beyond stating that the fumes were down to an “oil leak”. At the end of April 2024, O’Riordan received a maintenance report on an engine that was removed from the aircraft involved in the June 5th flight and sent for maintenance at an Iberia Air maintenance facility in Madrid, which was furnished to him by Conor Nolan, the director of safety and security at Aer Lingus. It was after he had pursued a grievance challenging the company on its level of engagement with him and raised issues about his name being attributed to an air safety report filed on the flight. Soaring energy costs and why ‘we can’t protect everyone from the impact of war’O’Riordan said he did not agree with the conclusion reached by that report that the leak had been the result of “wear on the gaskets”. “These engines are highly inspected. Any wear should have been detected in advance of this,” he said. O’Riordan told the WRC on Thursday that on February 24th, 2024, he used an online aviation safety portal run by the European Air Safety Authority (EASA) to make a report. It was one of a number of contacts he made to outside agencies around that time, he said. “I told them about my fume event and fume issues on Aer Lingus aircraft,” O’Riordan said. “On one Aer Lingus aircraft?” his barrister David Byrnes asked.“No, on many,” O’Riordan said. “I had in my possession an internal report from Aer Lingus, what’s called a safety plan progress report I was furnished by a captain in Aer Lingus.”“[This] highlighted there had been 22 fume events between January 2022 and January 2023,” he said. He said he believed his disclosure to EASA had prompted an emergency airworthiness directive on March 9th, 2024. That would have had the effect of grounding a number of Aer Lingus Airbus A320 airliners if the airline had not already taken them out of service the night before, the tribunal was previously told. “There was numerous aircraft grounded, numerous engines had to be replaced at short notice, at a cost of millions,” O’Riordan said. He said that a “thorough root cause analysis” of the June 5th flight would have “led us to the seal that was the subject of the EASA emergency airworthiness directive”. O’Riordan said his belief was that the actual cause of the leak was the failure of a labyrinth seal in the engine system caused by damage from an induction lamp used during maintenance at the Iberia workshop. He said there was “subterfuge” about filing an air safety report about the June 5th flight, in that his name was attached to it as the reporter. He said his understanding was that the report had in fact been filled out by Colm Wynne, a safety manager in flight operations, on foot of details supplied by the first officer. O’Riordan said he did not understand why the first officer had not been left to file the report. “I would have to question why it was done, because it wasn’t necessary. I have to draw the inference that there was an effort to mislead the authorities,” he said. He added that he regarded Aer Lingus’s safety management system as “compromised”. Byrnes later opened another document O’Riordan had shared in the course of his online “awareness campaign”. O’Riordan said it was an internal Aer Lingus document dating from January 2020, which he said was not promulgated to flight crew. “It shows Aer Lingus have known all this time about the manifest danger of fumes on aircraft,” he said. “I think about this document and that Aer Lingus knew about this issue since 2020. Why is Aer Lingus not warning passengers and crew about the danger to their lives?” O’Riordan said. The 2020 document included “odour descriptors for oil and hydraulic fumes” and stated that these “may contaminate the downstream vent ducting and the air carried to the cabin or flight deck”. He said his understanding was that any such contaminant would “remain in the system unless properly dealt with and continue to poison passengers, general public and crew”. “If we look at the safety data sheets for the oil used to lubricate Aer Lingus engines, it states it’s suspected of damaging fertility and the unborn child,” he added. Tom Mallon, for Aer Lingus instructed by Arthur Cox LLP, objected and said that had not been put to his witness. Byrnes said he was “not going down that road”. O’Riordan said the same document urged “continuous vigilance” for “suspect fumes, smoke, visible haze” on aircraft. “What were you trained to do if you picked up on an odour of smoke or smelly socks?” Byrnes asked. “We received no training on fumes at all,” O’Riordan said. “You heard Conor Nolan say he doesn’t think the public should be informed,” Mr Byrnes said. “That was his testimony,” O’Riordan said. “What’s your concern there?” counsel asked. “Aer Lingus knows about this. Why can’t the passengers know?” O’Riordan said. Nolan’s evidence to the WRC had been that O’Riordan had been wrong to share “confidential internal safety, engineering and operational data”, referring to the report on the repairs to the engine removed from the jet involved in the flight on June 5th, 2023. This was on the basis that material of that nature “viewed out of context by unqualified members of the public” had the potential to damage Aer Lingus’s reputation, he said. “In the wrong hands, it could be misconstrued as presenting some sort of safety risk,” the witness said. The airline wholly denies putting any passengers, staff or aircrew at risk. “I had reported to external agencies, reported internally, and now the attempts to shut me down in public were an attempt to mask the real imminent and manifest danger,” O’Riordan said. “I believe it’s very, very dangerous. One of the barriers against accidents and incidents and dangers in aviation is the crew’s ability to speak up about threats, and any attempt to shut that down is an attack on safety in aviation,” he continued. O’Riordan has now concluded his evidence-in-chief. The case continues on Friday.