Flight attendant trainee suing Qantas for failure to provide shrink

by Tom Johansmeyer on

So, you’re new on the job. In fact, your title still has “trainee” in it. And then something goes wrong. That’s enough to make you go home, pop the cork on a bottle of wine and lament the fact that you work for a third world company. Now, imagine the whole thing happening 30,000 feet from the ground. Yeah, it sucks. You need more than a bottle of wine to take the edge off at that point. In fact, there’s probably a good chance you’d want some counseling.

Well, that’s exactly what Jessie Holgersson wanted, and she doesn’t feel she got it fast enough.

According to AM, an ABC morning show in Australia, Holgersson, a flight attendant on the Qantas 747 that had an engine fire, didn’t get counseling until a day after the incident. Her attorney “says that was too late and claims that Miss Holgersson was discriminated against for raising safety concerns about the airline’s lack of care.” Yeah … lawyer. Discrimination. Do the math: Holgerrson is suing.

Says Holgersson:

I was on my second training flight, we’d just flown from Sydney to Singapore, and everything went great on that flight and we had a nice day in Singapore and then we were heading back home and everything seemed normal and fine and about sort of six minutes after take-off we had an incident with our engine nut blew out.

She adds that “afterwards we were told that it was a fairly normal occurrence and these things can happen and, you know, not to worry about it too much.”

To make matters worse, according to AM, “The trainee was not given a permanent job.”

Qantas says through a spokeswoman that “Miss Holgersson was being assessed for possible employment by a UK cabin crew subsidiary at the time of the flight, with any position to be based out of London.” The company cites her behavior in training as the reason it didn’t offer her a position – and that she didn’t want to work out of the UK.

As to the claim that the flight attendants weren’t provided with counseling, Qantas says that it provided immediate and appropriate support.

[photo by Skazama via Flickr]

Feds Try to Halt Starwood Suit of Hilton to Chase Criminal Charges

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Usually, it’s what goes on inside the hotels that is mysterious. Illicit trysts, quiet business deals and the occasional rendez-vous of spies (very occasional, I suspect) are what we’d love to believe happens in behind the closed doors of hotels up-market and down. The reality, however, is far more interesting. There is plenty of espionage going on in the hotel world, but it’s the hotels themselves – not he guests – who are getting in on the action … and now the feds are involved.

A lawsuit filed by Starwood Hotels against competitor Hilton may have to wait for a bit. Federal prosecutors believe that the civil litigation could impede the criminal investigation. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is pursuing charges that could include conspiracy, computer fraud, theft of trade secrets and interstate transportation of stolen goods against Hilton, as well as two executives that that the company hired from Starwood.

According to the filing by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, “The government seeks a stay of discovery pending resolution of the criminal investigation.”

Starwood alleges that Hilton swiped confidential documents in an attempt to develop an offer that would compete with Starwood’s W Hotels brand. Before the civil effort can be put on hold in favor of the criminal investigation, a judge will have to sign off on the motion.

Hilton’s response to the filing, according to USA Today is: “Hilton Worldwide continues to fully cooperate with the Government’s investigation and supports the Government’s motion to stay discovery in the Starwood civil litigation matter.”

Not exactly earth-shattering.

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Continental sham divorces pass court test

by Tom Johansmeyer on
Back in May, Continental Airlines sued nine pilots for getting sham divorces. The marital splits were part of a play for pension benefits, with the “ex” collecting while the pilot keeps earning. It’s good cash if you can find it, but Continental wasn’t thrilled at having to bear that extra cost. On Monday, a federal judge told the airline to live with it, ruling in favor of the pilots. Regardless of the pilots’ intentions, the judge said there wasn’t anything that would let him rule in favor of the airline.

Continental is considering an appeal, which makes sense given the money involved. The airline paid between $10 million and $11 million in pension distributions to the nine pilots, with some individual payments reaching as high as $900,000. In some cases, the spouses remarried after the check cleared.

Well, $11 million … do you know how many bags of peanuts pretzels that buys?

Passenger rights advocate sues Delta over alleged e-mail hacking

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Is Delta Airlines really a den of hackers? Passengers’ rights advocate Kate Hanni thinks so and is suing the world’s largest carrier over it. Hanni, of FlyersRights.org, alleges that Delta conspired with Dulles, Virginia-based Metron Aviation to yank e-mails from her computer in an effort to stall her “efforts to protect air travelers from lengthy tarmac delays and other inconveniences.”

She’s found an easy target for a war in the press – nobody is in favor of most of what airlines put us through. Hanni is asking for at least $11 million in damages and the opportunity to present her case before a jury. But, now that this has entered the legal system, we have to be especially careful not to indulge a public battle over everything except the evidence.

Delta spokesperson Trebor Banstetter can’t comment beyond, “Obviously, the idea that Delta would hack into someone’s e-mail is clearly without merit,” which was released in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Hanni claims that her service provider, AOL (which owns Gadling), confirmed that her e-mail had been hacked. She also says, in the court filings, that Metron officials revealed that Delta provided the stolen e-mails, which included lists of donors and personal files.

The linchpin in all this is a graduate student, employed by Metron, with whom Hanni was sharing information. Metron executives confronted the student with the e-mails and said that Delta wasn’t happy that Hanni was receiving information that would facilitate the passage of the passenger bill of rights. The contents of the messages were not clear from the lawsuit.

Metron provides services around research, airspace design and environmental analysis to the global air traffic industry, and it has Delta as a client. The company didn’t immediately respond to requests by the AP for comment.

It’s too soon to draw any conclusions from the lawsuit; clearly, there’s a lot of information that has yet to be located and released. So, let’s sit back and watch this unfold before drawing any conclusions.

American Airlines cleared on racism charges

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Six Iraqi-American passengers sued American Airlines, claiming that racism drove the cancellation of their flight. The men were all residents of Michigan and were employed by a security contract firm and had been participating in training with members of the U.S. military. Their flight was canceled, they believe, because of their nationality.

U.S. District Judge Paul Borman decided that the captain’s decision to return the August 28, 2007 flight to the gate in Chicago wasn’t “arbitrary and capricious.” The flight crew was accused of racial profiling, but Borman’s opinion recognized that the crew was right to be alarmed by unusual behavior. One passenger covered his head with a blanket – “mummy-like” and “menacing” – while the flight attendant provided the safety briefing. Another passenger claimed to be traveling alone, though he’d been seen earlier in the terminal with a group.

“All of these unusual actions by the passengers reasonably concerned the flight attendants, and justified their calls to the pilot,” the judge decided. “Based on the facts as (the captain) knew them to be when he decided to return the airplane to the gate, this court holds that his decision was not arbitrary and capricious.”