Source: Shanghai Daily Author: Lydia Chen 07/04/2008
Subject Concerned: Aircrew Airlines Human Resource
A court in Hubei Province has told 10 China Eastern Airlines' pilots who resigned to pay total compensation of 10 million yuan (US$1.46 million) to the carrier, adding more tension to a long-running dispute.
The People's Court of Qiaokou District in the provincial capital of Wuhan ruled for higher compensation than what was set by the the provincial Labor Arbitration Committee in August last year, Changjiang Times reported on July 4.
On August 14, the committee told 13 pilots who had asked to resign from the airline's Wuhan branch that they should pay a total of 9.29 million yuan to the company, which was much lower than China Eastern's demand of 1.05 billion yuan.
Three of the 13 pilots chose to withdraw their resignation and went back to work in November, the report said. The other 10 pilots then appealed to the Wuhan court.
The Wuhan branch of China Eastern said it has already sent appeals to the Intermediate People's Court of Wuhan as the compensation amount did not meet its expectations while the pilots said they can not afford such high amounts, the report said.
The carrier claimed the pilots owed it money for the years of training it provided.
The state-owned company claimed it had to invest heavily to train a qualified pilot, especially for overseas training, which can cost up to several thousand US dollars per hour, the newspaper cited the company lawyers as saying in a previous report.
The report said training fees for one pilot at colleges may range between 600,000 yuan and 1 million yuan. After graduation, numerous training projects offered by airline companies may last at least seven years. The period may be even longer if a pilot becomes a captain, the report said.
The legal battle was the latest in a dispute between Chinese carriers and their striking pilots.
China Eastern Airlines said in a statement on July 2 that it has suspended or demoted 13 pilots involved in its "flight-return" debacle that occurred earlier this year in southwestern China's Yunnan Province.
The Shanghai-based airline canceled a captain's license and expelled him from the Communist Party of China.
It suspended three flight instructors and five pilots from work. Two instructors and two pilots were demoted to first officers and received warnings from the Party.
Eight officials of the carrier's Yunnan branch also received warnings from the Party and six were sacked, including the branch's General Manager and Party Secretary.
Twenty-one flights returned to their departure point just after taking off in Yunnan on March 31 and April 1, disrupting the travel plans of more than 1,000 passengers.
An investigation showed that 11 flights were disrupted by pilots intentionally.
Disputes between domestic carriers and pilots have come under the spotlight recently after several incidents in March and last year.
More than 40 flight captains with Shanghai Airlines took sick leave together on March 14 after claiming they were being "treated unfairly."
On March 28, an identical scenario unfolded at Wuhan-based East Star Airlines when 11 captains suddenly took leave. The disruption caused the cancellation of several flights at Wuhan airport.
The ongoing conflicts were partly a result of a policy to introduce private capital into the aviation industry in 2004 and "lifetime contracts" between airlines and pilots.
The country has 12,000 civilian pilots, but official figures predict that the total number of flights will increase 80 percent by 2010 and 6,500 more pilots will be required.