Ryanair Pervert Fired: Why Won't U.S. Airlines Act Against Predators in Their Ranks?
Plus: a bit about what I do here and what's coming up
The Landing has gained dozens of new subscribers this week. Thank you all, especially my new paid subscribers (it means a lot!), for checking out this newsletter and bearing witness to the brave women who share their stories here. A few things to know:
I’m not an aviation writer. I’m an author and journalist who fell into aviation-adjacent reporting about harassment, assault and rape in the U.S. airline industry (see the Sten Molin story). In between day jobs, I struggle to keep up with the backlog of women who are ready to speak out in a safe space, but I’m happy to do it. In fact, I want to hear more from you if you’ve suffered this treatment and are sick of being silenced (contact me at MeTooAirlines at proton.me)
My default language is pilot=woman. Male pilot=man who flies planes
Coming soon: The Curious Case of Andrea Ratfield, an in-depth feature about a Delta pilot’s long, jaw-dropping fight for equality, justice, and a safe workplace, among other goals.
Up until now, all my stories have been about the United States airline industry. Not today. Today we’re talking about Irish budget airline Ryanair, which sent out an eye-popping email to staff on June 14.
“Europe’s Favourite Airline” informed everyone they’d sacked a sleazeball male pilot—a chief male pilot, actually, which is a position you’ve read about here recently—after he was caught harassing a cadre of junior pilots.
The airline jettisoned Aidan Murray, allegedly around 58 years old, after he asked women to send him pictures of their bodies, to which he brilliantly replied with such original hits as “You have a great body” and “amazing ass.”
Ryanair’s Chief People Officer Darrell Hughes said in the memo that the dismissal "follows an investigation over recent days which identified a pattern of repeated inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour towards a number of female junior pilots.”
This breached the airline’s “anti-harassment policy,” according to the memo. The investigation is said to involve a number of pilots who were allegedly “sexually harassed and coerced” by Murray.
Murray is said to have changed the pilots’ rosters so he could work alongside them in the cockpit and the alleged inappropriate behaviour is said to have taken place over the last 12 to 18 months. Other women at the airline between the ages of 21 and 32 apparently gave statements about him, and before long, he was out.
Now.
We need to talk about a couple things…
Great job, Ryanair, but what took you so long?
Murray worked for the airline for 26-28 years. What do we think the probability is that the women referenced in the memo are his first victims?
If you weren’t sure, I can tell you the probability with 100% certainty: 0.
If the allegations are true, there is ZERO chance this man has not been offending for years. I can say with relative certainty he also went after flight attendants in great numbers, who—according to the many who have contacted me—are often seen as easy targets and rarely find support if they report the man in power who harassed or assaulted them.
(Seriously: What do you think the odds are? Let me know in the comments).
I’m reminded of the wise words of fierce litigator and women’s rights advocate Jeanne Christensen, whose Q&A with me is worth a read:
Age has something to do with it in the sense of, we know that once they start getting away with it, that’s when it really escalates. No man wakes up at age 40 or 42 and decides today’s the day he’s going to do that. That never happens.
They start young. And it’s only when they’ve gotten away with it and enough time has passed, they think, “I’m not going to get called out for that. I’m going to do it again.” They get to a certain point where if they’re not going to get caught, they start doing it a lot.
We don’t know what pushed the Ryanair investigation over the cliff so they had to act. We do know this airline is not averse to sexual innuendo on its social media platforms.
Anyone remember this Tweet? I’m not touching this topic with a bargepole, but you can Google “prince of pegging” and “Prince William affair” if you want to know more about what this suggestive image is alluding to and why it was posted in a week when the heir to the British throne was getting pummeled on social media.
Over to you, U.S.-based airlines. Here’s an idea: Do something
A U.S. airline might fire an alleged predator if they have to, but they’ll contort themselves into a legal pretzel to cover up the story. They’ll pay people off, threaten, do whatever they can to squelch the story. There won’t be any admission-of-sexual-harassment memo. There certainly won’t be any changes.
I’m talking to the likes of you, American Airlines, American Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest, Southwest, Delta and JetBlue (“The women say they reported the rape to JetBlue but that no action was ever taken against the pilots.”)…
As retired Delta Captain Karlene Petitt Tweeted today, this is the tip of the proverbial iceberg…
A postscript: Who’s platformed in aviation—and who’s not
It was a rare sight and a balm for me to come across the work of Ben Schlappig at One Mile at a Time when researching the Ryanair story.
Most of the headlines I scrolled through read like the outlets were reporting on a new brand of toaster.
But OMAAT used the vivid, refreshing language we need. He shone a light on something most male aviation writers are ignoring. After doing this relentlessly for nearly two years now, I’ve experienced how hard it is to get (almost all male) aviation writers to care, let alone cover it, let alone write with the show of the disgust this ingrained problem deserves.
Ben’s site is mostly about premium travel, awards points, flying tips, etc., and it is, according to the website, “the most widely read independently owned points & premium travel site on the web.”
His headline: “Ryanair Fires Creepy Chief Pilot For Harassing Women.”
His takeaway: “It’s never okay to act like this in a workplace, but it’s especially bad in the airline industry, where the position of pilot is almost exclusively seniority based. It’s not like you can easily just find a similar job with a similar lifestyle and pay at another airline.
I imagine these women must have been scared when they came forward against the most powerful pilot at the airline. I hope Murray thinks long and hard about what he put these women through…”
This kind of reporting matters.
It’s all about platform. Who’s platformed in the aviation space? Men. CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Guardian.…you name it, their aviation writers are men. Jeff Wise basically got his own Netflix docuseries to spread around his cockamamie theory about what happened to MH380. It boggles the mind.
I have never come across one of them covering this issue seriously. They are complicit. I’ll say it again:
Men who cover aviation for major outlets and ignore this issue are complicit in keeping victims silenced and allowing predators to continue abusing.
The dozens of American Airlines flight attendants who were stalked, assaulted and raped by the late American Airlines F.O. Sten Molin have reached out to male aviation writers for decades. They are ignored. I’ve tagged these men myself in stories I’ve written. I’m ignored. The women I write about are ignored.
They won’t touch this story, and it’s in their faces. They know, and they can’t pretend they don’t anymore.
[Edited to remove content about aviation writer Kyra Dempsey, who goes by “Admiral Cloudberg,” based on conversations she and I had over on Reddit about Sten Molin subsequent to this being published].
Final note
There are top-notch aviation writers who are women, so for starters, try the brilliant and relentless Kathryn Creedy, a veteran aviation journalist, and of course retired pilot Karlene Petitt, who has never stopped writing about her industry.
-Sara
*Mental health in aviation is an extremely delicate topic, as it is a vital part of aviation safety, but it is also too easily weaponized by airlines to punish and silence pilots. I know this. I do not write about this lightly. More to come on this topic in a future story.
About me
I’m an award-winning journalist and author of the #1 bestselling book The Strong Ones, the true story of a groundbreaking 7-month U.S. Army women’s strength study and its long-term impact on women in the military.
My reporting has appeared in national and international publications including U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), People, Glamour, Shape and more. I contributed to the feminist anthology Letters of Intent along with such icons as Judy Blume, Ntozake Shange and Gloria Steinem. Perhaps best known for my viral resignation letter from People magazine, I covered high-profile crime stories for them across Europe and the U.S. including the Amanda Knox case in Italy, the disappearance of Madeline McCann in Portugal, and the tragic school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I am the author of two mystery novels: The Underdogs and Famous Last Words.
The Landing was born after I wrote a lengthy investigative series and personal defense of American Airlines First Officer Sten Molin, the pilot of tragic flight 587 and a friend of mine in the late 1990s. Starting in late 2021, dozens of women, most of them flight attendants, came forward to re-educate me and my readers about Molin’s double life as a serial rapist, harasser, stalker and predator of underage girls.