Pilots Breaching Contract Bound to Face Lawsuit, Pay Huge Fees

Many pilots have found themselves embroiled in lawsuits as their resignation triggered employers to sue them for breach of contract, reported the Global Times.

Take the case of an unnamed 32-year-old pilot from China Eastern Airlines who resigned in Jan. 2015.

CEA hired the said pilot in 2013. The contract he signed required him to work for the said airline company for eight years.

For not honoring the clause stipulated in the contract, CEA wants him to pay the company a staggering 5 million yuan.

In Aug. 2015, the pilot lost the case, but after a month he approached the court to appeal his case. According to the report, there are no announcements released yet regarding the decision of the court.

CEA likewise sued three other pilots for similar case.

According to analysts, pilots are hindered from exploring other career opportunities because of binding work contracts. Accompanying huge penalties further prevent them from resigning way before their contracts expire.

Zhang Qihuai, an aviation law expert at the Beijing Law Society, told the Global Times that the work tenure demanded in a contract should not remove the right of workers to resign.

This matter comes at a time when, according to experts, China needs a large number of pilots.

“There’s a huge market in China right now for aviation,” said David Hsu, the vice president of the California-based Pegasus International Resources, a partner and representative of major Chinese European and U.S. airlines, reported Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine in Aug. 2015.

The magazine said that Boeing predicted that China will fall short of 77,400 commercial pilots within 20 years.

Fabrice Bregier, president and chief executive officer of Airbus, the civil aircraft manufacturer from France, said that in the next 20 years, Asia needs 200,000 pilots, according to South China Morning Post.

“There is a shortage of good, trained pilots,” said Bregier.