Relieved of Duty for Refusing to Endanger Lives in Severe Weather

Jaybird180

Jaybird180

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Pilot Sues Continental Express For What He Says Is Wrongful Grounding

Attorney Says He Was "Relieved of Duty for Refusing to Endanger Lives in Severe Weather"

An Atlantic Southeast Airlines pilot has filed a lawsuit against parent company Continental Express claiming retaliation against him and ruin of his professional reputation. The suit claims the pilot was targeted because he took precautionary action during severe weather conditions, costing the company money. In the filing the pilot alleges the airline used his pursuit of treatment for depression during a divorce years before as reasoning for grounding him.
Atlantic Southeast Airlines grounded Captain Michael Hirsch, citing a "psychological" condition after Hirsch refused to jeopardize passenger and crew safety on a flight from Houston to Milwaukee. Hirsch claimed extreme snow and ice conditions caused several weather delays.

"The company illegally began a pattern of discrimination and retaliation against Captain Hirsch, although he was performing all the essential functions of his job without restriction," Hirsch's attorneys said in a news release. "The fact that a company can attack an employee who sought help through an employee assistance program, which it provides, jeopardizes the rights of employees everywhere in every industry. No amount of bottom-line profit is worth endangering innocent passengers or trampling rights covered under law."

According to employee law, employers cannot discriminate based on disability in hiring, firing, training, or matters regarding compensation or the terms, conditions or privileges or employment.

The law firm representing Hirsch said he is aware of other employees discriminated against and wants to return to piloting with a clean record. "Captain Hirsch wants Atlantic Southeast to admit that it falsely accused Captain Hirsch of being mentally unstable to fly and to remove all documentation that prevents him from making a living in a job which he is honorably committed," the news release continued
FMI: www.lemond-law.com
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Frankly, I belive this guy is getting shafted. Perhaps I'm biased against the airline corporate structure and their management practices. Perhaps I have a college professor to blame for that.:dunno:
 
Maybe the FAA should investigate whether the airline has a pattern of pressuring pilots to make unsafe flights.
 
This would not surprise me in the slightest. It got so bad in the Offshore sector that Louisiana started holding management criminally liable in accidents where they intimidated captains into operating into hazardous conditions. There are a couple from test cases over a decade ago probably still sitting in Angola with multiple consecutice terms of Manslaughter. Offshore management caught on real quick and became want to call a captain for making a weather/safety call. The other end to that is if you make them in conditions that don't call for them and that puts in question your judgement and ability. Then they'll just quit calling you in.
 
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Sounds bad but I'd sure like to hear the story from several sides, see the conditions that existed, see what other aircraft were doing at the time.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Sounds bad but I'd sure like to hear the story from several sides, see the conditions that existed, see what other aircraft were doing at the time.
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Exactly. You have to look at each call individually, and also any history of calls may apply. I'm tired of being fed one sided stories under the guise of "Journalism".
 
Does it matter? PIC says no-go, it's no-go.

It should be an analysis of whether or not a particular PIC does it too often, never about "what the other aircraft were doing".

That's the old, "If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?" argument, reversed.

Where's our completely unbiased, 100% safety-dedicated, never bought off by lobbyists, infallible government agency, the FAA on this one?

You know, the people with mountains of research on crew rest and plenty of dead bodies to back it up, who let the politicians keep them from changing the crew rest rules.

Yeah... Um... Nevermind I asked.
 
Does it matter? PIC says no-go, it's no-go.
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That's true to a point. But you know how every crowd has that one guy...
Let's say a pilot is pzzed at management for some reason (and I hear they do give decent reasons from time to time). So in retaliation the pilot decides to do whatever he can to kibosh his company's success. It is conceivable that he will use this rule (pic's ultimate authority) deviously, to achieve his goal.
So, if this one guy has been repeatedly deviating or refusing flights when everyone else is having no problems, maybe there is more to the story than what journalist A is revealing.
I would want to see the metars, tafs, radar images, pireps, and interview pilots flying the same area at the same time, in the hopes of getting a broad picture. Plus look at this pilot's history. Of course, I'd also want to know the company's history for this sort of thing, do other pilots say mgmt was pushing?
 
denverpilot said:
Does it matter? PIC says no-go, it's no-go.

It should be an analysis of whether or not a particular PIC does it too often, never about "what the other aircraft were doing".

That's the old, "If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?" argument, reversed.
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Well, there is the other side to that as well and that when really bad weather hits, other planes ground as well. So, if you see that NO other planes flying that route are grounding, it does cause one to question the motivation or competency behind the grounding. Airlines run to Standards correct? Why did all these other people observe different standards?
 
I don't know. Do airlines run to standard go/no-go decision trees?

I've never seen one. We'd have to ask the pilots who fly for one.

I bet it's "pilot's discretion" officially. They always want to make sure they can blame the dead guy during the resulting civil suits after the crash.
 
This sounds quite a bit like the case in the other thread about the truck driver. Both people are accusing their company for retaliating because they supposedly took advantage of an employee assistance program, the truck driver for alcoholism, the pilot for depression. Interesting that more people are into defending the pilot than the truck driver even though there is scanty evidence in both cases.
article said:
The fact that a company can attack an employee who sought help through an employee assistance program, which it provides, jeopardizes the rights of employees everywhere in every industry.
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In this case isn't he claiming the mental "condition" to protect his job after making a solid no-go weather decision? The mental condition is just a smokescreen until (he hopes) someone steps in (FAA) and (correctly) backs his no-go call.

Or did I totally misread this thing?
 
denverpilot said:
They always want to make sure they can blame the dead guy during the resulting civil suits after the crash.
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Since he was acting in his capacity as an employee, I doubt that blaming him would affect the damage awards against the company one way or the other.
 
denverpilot said:
In this case isn't he claiming the mental "condition" to protect his job after making a solid no-go weather decision? The mental condition is just a smokescreen until (he hopes) someone steps in (FAA) and (correctly) backs his no-go call.

Or did I totally misread this thing?
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I think you totally misread... What I got is that he had previously used this counseling service during his divorce. After he made this costly call they decided to sideline him and say he's nuts and unfit to fly citing the counseling service use.
 
Ahh. Ok. I'm seriously impaired this weekend I see. Head cold, put me in bed for half of today and still raging tonight. Hoping to sleep it off by time to work on Tuesday. Hell of a way to spend a holiday weekend. :(
 
There's only one side of the story, presented by press release by a labor law lawyer.

This guy might have a case or it might be blowing snow. Wouldn't be the first time that different facts come out at trial.
 
Without knowing more than the info publicized as the relevant facts, I wouldn't side with any party. I view it like a hypothetical question. So, what is really going on?

Is there a pilots union at Continental Express?

I asked a longtime friend (retired pilot) active in the union leadership at his feeder airline how the company should get rid of bad apples when the union works hard to prevent establishment of a precedent where the company can decide who is not fit to remain.

He said they would tell the company how to handle those cases where someone wasn't fit to fly. He also mentioned, the company usually didn't act on the union's unofficial "suggestion."

I saw his answer as unsatisfactory for a long list of reasons. I wouldn't assume anything like this is as cut and dried as it seems. Only people who have been in the same environment, someone that has known the players for a while, knows the relevant agreements and policy and the various personal agendas might know enough of the facts.
 
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