{"id":101557,"date":"2025-10-03T18:11:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/101557\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T18:11:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T18:11:17","slug":"aer-lingus-pilot-hospitalised-by-toxic-fumes-took-issue-with-his-name-on-safety-report-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/101557\/","title":{"rendered":"Aer Lingus pilot hospitalised by \u2018toxic fumes\u2019 took issue with his name on safety report \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aer Lingus<\/a>\u2019s director of safety has said his department acted properly when it filed a safety report attached with the name of a veteran pilot who was in hospital in the wake of his alleged exposure to \u201ctoxic fumes\u201d while in command of a jet.<\/p>\n

The Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC) is continuing its hearings into complaints by sacked airline captain Tom O\u2019Riordan under the Protected Disclosures Act, 2014, the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act, 2005, and the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977, against Aer Lingus Ltd \u2013 all of which are denied by the airline.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Riordan told the WRC last year he was poisoned by \u201ctoxic fumes\u201d in the flight deck of an Airbus A320 in an incident during an empty repositioning flight from London to Dublin on June 5th, 2023.<\/p>\n

The tribunal has heard the veteran pilot, with 16 years\u2019 command experience, spent five days in Beaumont Hospital and did not return to his duties before he was sacked by the airline last September.<\/p>\n

The airline\u2019s lawyers say he had \u201cdefamed Aer Lingus\u201d in online posts. Mr O\u2019Riordan\u2019s case is he was attempting to raise concerns of wrongdoing in relation to safety matters at the airline, had exhausted all his internal options and was entitled to go public.<\/p>\n

Giving evidence on Thursday, Aer Lingus\u2019s director of safety and security Conor Nolan said: \u201cMy understanding is the aircraft taxied to the gate and during its arrival to parking is when Mr O\u2019Riordan felt unwell. Paramedics were summoned, that took a period of time, there was a process of triage at the aircraft,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The tribunal has heard Mr O\u2019Riordan wrote to Aer Lingus CEO Lynne Embleton in the spring of 2024 stating he was \u201caghast\u201d to discover his name had been attached to an air safety report on the incident, which was submitted to the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) on June 7th that year.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Riordan had been contacted about the preparation of a safety report by staff at the airline in the immediate aftermath of the incident, who \u201cseemed to stop looking for information\u201d after he told them he was still in hospital, his legal team have submitted.<\/p>\n

The following spring, Mr O\u2019Riordan had claimed in the letter to Ms Embleton that the report had been \u201cfalsified\u201d, the WRC heard.<\/p>\n

Mr Nolan\u2019s evidence was that staff in the airline\u2019s safety office had access to create reports under the name of a member of the airline\u2019s crew and the airline had a 72-hour window to inform the Irish Aviation Authority of such events.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be very clear, at the immediate time that all this was happening, in the days after the event, we had no reasonable foresight we were going to end up analysing what was done where we are today,\u201d Mr Nolan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe measures taken to fulfil the reporting obligations in line with custom and practice \u2013 convention is the word I heard used earlier \u2013 were done in the reasonable expectation that Mr O\u2019Riordan would participate in the process later, and I stand over that process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He added when Mr O\u2019Riordan made an issue of it, a committee of senior managers \u201cconcluded there was nothing further to examine\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201c[We decided] if it was in any way helpful to Mr O\u2019Riordan we would remove his name and revert to what could have been done in the first instance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Byrnes put it to him that this was an acceptance that his client\u2019s name \u201cshouldn\u2019t have appeared\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an offer to help resolve what appeared to be an impasse some nine months after the event,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Byrnes asked whether the witness could understand Mr O\u2019Riordan\u2019s concern about the authorship of the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I still don\u2019t appreciate the concern. Everything that was done was out of an abundance of reasonable care to and to ensure we could start an investigation without delay to fulfil our principal obligation of putting safety first. That was the only motivation,\u201d the witness said.<\/p>\n

Adjudicator Aideen Collard adjourned the case overnight.<\/p>\n

Mr Byrnes said his client had average remuneration of \u20ac200,000 a year. \u201cThe maximum jurisdiction is a million euro,\u201d he told Ms Collard. \u201cThis is a big case, and there\u2019s no illusion to the contrary on that, and we will build our blocks as we see fit on this side of the house,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m showing, chair, is that by the time [my client] got on social media and protested with placards … I\u2019m exhausting this internal stuff to show that by the time he did what he did, he was entitled to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aer Lingus\u2019s director of safety has said his department acted properly when it filed a safety report attached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[2442,79,18,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-101557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-aer-lingus","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}