For Ryanair, Bellew’s return on Dec. 1 comes as Europe’s busiest airline is trying to recruit additional pilots and persuade existing pilots to stay with the offer of new, improved conditions to avoid a repeat of the cancellations.
Bellew was director of flight operations at Ryanair before he left in 2014. He joined Malaysia as chief operations officer in September 2015 and took over as chief executive in July last year.
Ryanair said that Bellew would be given a specific responsibility for managing pilots. His mission will be “to ensure that the pilot rostering failure which Ryanair suffered in early September will never be repeated,” the company said in a statement.
Ryanair in all has announced the cancellation of around 20,000 flights after admitting it did not have enough standby pilots to operate a reliable schedule.
Irish stockbroker Goodbody last week said in a note that Bellew was well regarded in the industry and was “thought to have had a good relationship with the pilots when he was there.”
In recent weeks pilots at Ryanair, which does not recognize any labor union, have been getting together on social media to lobby for a major overhaul of the company’s employment conditions.
