The A330 was, for years, arguably the safest airliner in the world. It was Air France - not the A330 - that changed that by continuing to use a pitot tube that was known to be problematic and expecting pilots to always know when it was giving good readings or bad readings.

So, don't blame the A330 for what was an Air France shortcoming.

I assume that Aer Lingus subcontracted some of their flying to Air Contractors to reduce costs by having lower paid pilots do the flying instead of their own pilots. Nasty business, but that's business.

What about taking BA?