One of three pilots being sued by Ryanair has denied in the High Court an allegedly defamatory email was an "attempt to bring the company to its knees".
Captain Ted Murphy said the email, which the airline says falsely inferred management misled the market, was part of an effort to get the company to establish meaningful negotiations with a single representative body of pilots.
It was not an attempt agitate pilots to rise up against management but was an effort to organise them, said Captn Murphy, who is a former president of the Irish Airline Pilots Association and of the International Federation of Airline Pilots.
He was under cross examination in the Ryanair’s ongoing action against him, Evert Van Zwol and John Goss. The three deny the September 2013 “pilot update” email to 2,289 pilots about “what the markets are saying about Ryanair” was defamatory.
He disagreed with Thomas Hogan SC, for Ryanair, the object of the update was to force management into negotiations and to “outcast management so pilots would rise up against them”.
While there was the weapon of a strike in a dispute, he did not think they were using force “but we were trying in effect to get them to recognise us”.
He agreed pilots have considerable power. “Aren’t we facing a strike next week?”, counsel asked. “I read the papers like you Mr Hogan, ”,he said.
Earlier, Capt Murphy told Mr Hogan he had repeatedly written to Ryanair asking them to engage and got the same response that the airline does not deal with unions and non-Ryanair pilot groups.
Update
However, shortly after the September, 2013 pilot update was published, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said at a press conference in Stockholm he would deal with a trade union when the majority of his pilots were members and he specifically mentioned a figure of 1,602 pilots, Captn Murphy said.
At its own subsequent press conference in Berlin, the RPG invited to Mr O’Leary to honour his statemement to join in meaningful negotiations because they had the 1602 members figure.
“Were you surprised he didn’t take that up”, Mr Hogan asked, in light of the pilot update saying the company was minipulating the market.
Capt Murphy said he was surprised “but if he had come and talked to us we could have discussed the issue in the update”.
“You published what they believed was a gravely defamatory statement and expected him to come and meet you?”. Captn Murphy said he did not consider any defamatory statement had been made.
In reply earlier to questions from his own counsel, David Whelan, Captn Murphy described a letter from Ryanair executive Howard Millar in 2013, responding to a survey among RPG members, as typical of the “puerile drivel” they received from the company.
Capt Murphy, who dealt with safety and technical matters in his trade union work, said while letters from the RPG to Ryanair were always proper and business-like, he was astounded by the airline’s “childish” response. “We get this puerile drivel back”.
Council
The court heard that in his 45 years as a pilot, Captn Murphy worked mainly with Aer Lingus but also with a number of smaller airlines and with the International Civil Aviation Organisation. and has also written handbooks used in the industry.
He was approached in 2013 to become a member of the RPG interim council with the aim of eventually handing over the organisation to Ryanair pilots who he said were afraid to be identified as being involved with the RPG.
Capt Murphy said the letter with the “puerile” comments in it came from Howard Millar, Ryanair’s chief financial officer at the time and the person with overall responsibility for safety at the airline.
Every letter the RPG got from Ryanair went along the lines of “denigrating who we were and our motives and treating us with disrepect”.
The response from Mr Millar was in relation a letter the RPG had sent to Ryanair calling for a meeting to discuss a 2013 survey of Ryanair pilots which had given cause for concern, Captn Murphy said.
Mr Millar’s response was Ryanair would not engage with the RPG, which he described as a “self confessed front” for a European pilot union and “a joke”.
The case continues.