With cancelled Spirit Airlines flights resulting in fisticuffs at the nation’s airports, a federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the union representing Spirit pilots, hoping to get passengers moving again.
Yesterday, Spirit sued some of its pilots and the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents thousands of pilots at multiple national and regional airlines, alleging a “pervasive illegal work slowdown” resulting in hundreds of cancelled flights, thousands of passengers with disrupted travel plans, and millions of dollars in lost revenue for Spirit.
The ALPA denied these allegations, saying the Spirit pilots were not engaged in any work slowdown, and that they were in fact trying to restore normal operations to the airline.
However, this morning, a federal court judge in Fort Lauderdale granted Spirit’s request for a temporary restraining order (TRO), finding that the airline was likely to prevail in its claim that the pilots were violating the Railway Labor Act by making a concerted effort to not perform normal flight operations.
“Unless this Court issues a TRO… Plaintiff will suffer immediate and irreparable damage in the form of damage to its business reputation and customer goodwill, increased costs for measures designed to avoid flight delays and cancellations, and loss of revenue and associated costs caused by flight delays and cancellations, none of which may be recoverable from Defendants, and much of which can never be recovered,” writes the court []PDF]. “Spirit has shown, through affidavits, that it will suffer substantial and irreparable injury without the TRO. It further appears that unless such activity is restrained, the travel plans of large numbers of Plaintiff’s customers will be disrupted, and the public will be deprived of transportation services, causing serious and substantial damage to the public interest.”
So until the court holds further hearings on this dispute, the pilots are barred from “calling, permitting, instigating, authorizing, encouraging, participating in, approving, or continuing any form of interference” with Spirit’s operations.
Specifically prohibited actions include, “strike, work stoppage, sick-out, slowdown, work to rule campaign, concerted refusal to accept voluntary or overtime flight assignments… slow taxiing, writing up maintenance items, calling in fatigued, delaying flights, refusing to answer a call from the scheduling, refusing to fly an aircraft that meets legal requirements for flight, or refusing to accept voluntary or overtime flying.”
According to live flight tracking on FlightAware.com, 38 Spirit flights have already been cancelled today — more than any other carrier in the U.S. Yesterday, the airline called of 65 flights and delayed more than double that number.
We’ve reached out to both Spirit and ALPA for comment on the restraining order and will update if we receive a response.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist