Court ruling calls for pilots to pay 10m yuan to China Eastern

By Lydia Chen  |   2008-7-4  |     ONLINE EDITION

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 City ruled for higher compensation than what was set by the the provincial Labor Arbitration Committee in August last year, Changjiang Times reported today.

On August 14, the committee told 13 pilots who had asked to resign from the 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 carriers and their striking pilots.