The Irish Aviation Authority has been called upon by its British accident investigators to examine cabin crew training at Ryanair.
The recommendation was made by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) investigating an emergency landing by a Ryanair flight from Dublin at Stansted Airport two years ago.
The AAIB's report issued today says cabin crew struggled to open emergency exits as passengers "pushed and shoved" to get out of a plane that had landed with an engine on fire.
Some passengers on the Boeing 737 were evacuated on to the side of the plane where the fire was being fought.
Six of the passengers who had climbed on to the right wing of the plane were ordered back into the aircraft to seek alternative exits, the report said.
Eventually all 117 passengers on the February 27th, 2002, flight were evacuated and the fire in the right engine extinguished. Four passengers sustained minor injuries in the evacuation.
The report said that two cabin crew members had had difficulty opening emergency doors and that some new entrant cabin crew personnel would not have had training in operating these heavy doors which had evacuation chutes attached.
There was some "ambiguity" about whether the training requirements included the need to operate exits in all modes of operation, said the report.
The AAIB also added that after the landing the cockpit crew had put the plane into a crosswind position with the right engine on the upwind side. A crosswind had worsened the situation on an on-fire British Airways' Boeing 737 at Manchester airport in 1985 when 55 people died.
Of the Ryanair incident, the AAIB said: "Had the right engine developed an uncontained fire, the relative wind would have exacerbated the situation and adversely affected the survivability of such an event."
The report added that had the word "fire" been communicated to the flight crew initially, instead of "smoke", then it "may have triggered them into giving greater consideration as to where to bring the aircraft to a stop".
A Ryanair pilot who was among the passengers had noticed "some pushing and shoving in the cabin" during the evacuation but had generally felt that the procedure had run smoothly, the report said.
PA