Court says pilots must pay more

By Lydia Chen  |   2008-7-5  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

A COURT in Hubei Province has told 10 China Eastern Airlines pilots who resigned from the company to pay a total of 10 million yuan (US$1.46 million) compensation to the carrier.

The People's Court of Qiaokou District in the provincial capital of Wuhan City ruled for higher compensation than that set by the provincial Labor Arbitration Committee in August last year, the Changjiang Times reported.

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. China Eastern had demanded 1.05 billion yuan.

Three of the 13 pilots withdrew their resignations and went back to work in November, the report said. The other 10 appealed to the Wuhan court.

The Wuhan branch of China Eastern said it had already sent appeals to the Intermediate People's Court of Wuhan as the compensation amount did not meet its expectations, 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 pilots, especially in overseas training which can cost several thousand US dollars per hour, the newspaper said.

The legal battle was the latest in a dispute between carriers and their pilots.

China Eastern Airlines said earlier this week that it had suspended or demoted 13 pilots involved in its "flight-return" debacle that occurred earlier this year in southwestern China's Yunnan Province.

Twenty-one flights returned to their departure point just after take-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.