Former PAL pilot ordered to pay airline

Monday, 11 October 2010 15:09 Recto Mercene / Reporter
Business Mirror

FOR violating his contractual obligations and training agreement with Philippine Airlines (PAL) in 2006, a former PAL pilot was ordered by the Regional Trial Court in Makati to pay the flag carrier P1.87 million, plus interest, for the cost of training his replacement, as well as P50,000 in attorney’s fees.

In a decision dated September 15, 2010, Judge Elpidio Calis said one of the condition of pilot Zenon Lukban’s training agreement required him to serve the flag carrier for five years in exchange for his training.

Only two years after completing his training, Lukban, on April 19, 2006, wrote a letter of resignation to PAL’s chief pilot Capt. Rolly Canlas to take effect on May 20, 2006.

On May 8, 2006, PAL management officially rejected Lukban’s resignation, saying this was in violation of his training contract which was to expire in July 2009. The agreement
also required the pilot to file his notice of resignation 120 days before the intended date of resignation.
This requirement has since changed to 180 days after the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) declared the job of pilots and aircraft mechanics as “mission critical skills.”
But since Lukban went Awol (absent without official leave) immediately after tendering his resignation, administrative and civil cases were pursued by the airline against the pilot.

The RTC’s order comes on the heels of PAL’s move to lodge multimillion-peso damage suits against 27 pilots and first officers who resigned in August 2010 to take higher-paying jobs in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia. So far, 16 pilots and first officers are facing charges of abandonment of duty and breach of contract in the Regional Trial Court in Makati.

The abrupt resignations forced PAL, which is currently mired in a labor dispute with its cabin crew and ground unions, to cancel some of its domestic flights in July.

Meanwhile, every day hundreds of cabin-crew applicants flock to the recruitment offices of PAL in the hopes of landing jobs, especially in view of the airline’s dispute with its cabin-crew union that many probably expect may result in some openings.

“For the first nine months of the year, PAL received close to 20,000 job applications. Our Talent Acquisition, Management and Retention Division accepts an average of 100 applicants a day. For August alone, a total of 3,520 applications were processed,” said Jose S.L. Uybarreta, vice president for Human Resources Development.

“PAL recently added two brand-new ‘Extended Range’ Boeing 777-300s to its fleet of wide-body aircraft. This led to the promotion of senior cabin crew and opened the door for the hiring and training of new ones,” he added.

The labor case between PAL and its cabin-crew union—the Flight Attendants’ and Stewards’ Association of the Philippines (Fasap) —is under arbitration at the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) after Fasap rejected a management offer of P105 million in increased salary and rice allowances, expanded maternity-related benefits, and extended retirement age of 45 from the original 40 for both male and female cabin crew. ?

“If PAL is discriminating or abusing its cabin crew or both, applicants should outright be disillusioned from entering PAL. But many real-life success stories of our flight attendants fuel dreams of starting a flying career with PAL,” said Uybarreta.