A senior member of cabin crew who was dismissed by Ryanair for misconduct has told the Employment Appeals Tribunal that she did not fall asleep on board a flight.
Vanessa Redmond was dismissed by the airline company after a passenger complained that she blocked off the first row of passenger seats on a flight from Dublin to Durham, England, in May 2005, sat in the row herself, read a book and fell asleep or appeared to be asleep.
Ms Redmond joined Ryanair in February 1999 and had reached the rank of senior cabin crew by the time of her dismissal in July, 2005. She told tribunal chairman Eoin Martin that while she could not remember the flight in question, she was sure that she had not fallen asleep on it.
She denied having neglected to carry out security checks, but admitted giving a security code to a junior member of staff to operate the flight deck door, which she said was not unusual. She admitted that she may have blocked off the front row of seats, but said that was not unusual.
Ms Redmond told the tribunal that on the day of the flight, May 19th, she was not reading a fiction book but said she did not recall the particular flight because she was not called in to answer the allegations until a week after it.
Earlier, the tribunal took evidence from a passenger who had initiated the complaint against Ms Redmond. For the first time in the history of the tribunal, the evidence was given via video link with witness Matt Shepherd, a passenger on the flight and partner of a member of Ryanair staff, speaking to the tribunal from Perth, Australia.
Mr Shepherd reiterated the details of the complaint he made against Ms Redmond, but said he could not say with certainty that she had been asleep. When pressed by the tribunal, he agreed that he would describe what she was doing as "nodding off".
Patrick Enright, a former senior cabin crew member with Ryanair, who had worked with Ms Redmond, described her as "very professional" and "good with crew and passengers".
He said that as a "number one", he had blocked off rows at the front of the plane and said it was done "not to have passengers in your face". But he stopped the practice after being shouted at by a member of senior management. He also said that giving the security code to junior staff members was standard practice.
The case concludes tomorrow.
