Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Judge rules for pilots suing airline over hazard pay

A federal judge has found Vision Airlines Inc. of North Las Vegas misled him and the current and former pilots suing the airline over hazard pay for war-time flights into Iraq and Afghanistan and has hit the airline with sanctions by effectively ruling in favor of the pilots.

Roger Hunt, chief U.S. District Court judge for Nevada, this week as a sanction struck from the court record Vision’s response to the 2009 lawsuit and entered a default judgment against the airline, finding it liable for misconduct alleged by the pilots. The only remaining issue to be litigated is the damages due the pilots, and that issue is set to be decided with a trial beginning next week.

Trial in the case had been set for last month but was delayed by another trial. In the meantime, the parties have been feuding over discovery disputes.

In a ruling harshly critical of Vision, Hunt on Wednesday found Vision had engaged in “clandestine actions and misrepresentations” in abusing the discovery process by failing to timely turn over documents and information to the pilots’ attorneys as ordered.

Calling its conduct “inexcusable,” Hunt found “Vision has intentionally delayed production of documents, misrepresented its current and past production to both the court and the class (class action plaintiffs), and otherwise engaged in bad faith conduct.”

The lawsuit, filed in January 2009 by attorneys for former Vision pilot Gerald Hester of Colleyville, Texas, claimed Hester and some 300 other current and former employees hadn’t received extra pay for flying in and out of war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2005. The lawsuit said at least $21 million was due the flight crews.

Vision is a government subcontractor that regularly flew passengers on government missions from Washington, D.C., to Europe and then to Kabul, Afghanistan, or Baghdad, Iraq.

The lawsuit said that because of the hazards associated with the flights, captains and first officers were to receive additional hazard pay of $2,500 for each take-off and landing, with flight attendants and mechanics required to receive $1,500 per flight operation.

Vision denied withholding the hazard pay and said all its flights crews were paid what was due them under their employment agreements.

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