axl

There you have it.

ORD-LIH

I used to work for one of the firm's that handled the UA Pilots' pension. Two of the trustees were pilots and this is always how they described it to me. Great guys and surprisingly astute when it came to our financial initiatives, which is never the case when dealing with employee trustees on pension boards.

calvink669

+100

EsquireFlyer

Maybe you can make this as a moral argument, but it's not legally correct.

In general, one party's breach of the contract, if it's an accidental, minor, and technical breach, will not entitle the other party to deliberately and completely refuse to perform his/her entire side of the bargain.

Say, for example, you rent a car from Hertz. The agreement says that they will provide you with the car with a full tank of gas, that you will return the car to the original rental location within 2 days, and that you will refill the gas tank when you return the car.

But when you pick up the car, you see that the gas tank is only 7/8 full. Hertz breached the contract. So, would you be entitled to return the car with only 7/8 of a tank of gas in 2 days, rather than with a full tank? Yes, I think so.

But let's say that instead, you want to teach Hertz a lesson to not rip off their customers by providing gas tanks that are less full than the contractually specified amount. So instead, when you are finished using the car, you don't drive back to the Hertz location. Instead, you drive up and down the freeway, deliberately running the gas tank to empty, and then when the car completely runs out of gas, you leave it parked in the middle of the highway, about 5 miles from the Hertz location, and you get out, and walk home. The rental car gets hit by another car because you left it parked in the freeway. Do you think that would be okay? If Hertz sued you for the damage to the car, would you be able to successfully argue that: (1) you and Hertz had an agreement, whereby Hertz would provide you with a full tank of gas at pickup, (2) because Hertz breached their agreement to provide a full tank of gas, you were excused from your duty to return the car to the Hertz location, (3) the fault lies with the first-breaching party, because if Hertz that provided a full tank of gas, you would not have had to punish them, and you would also have had enough gas to drive the last 5 miles to the Hertz location and return the car, and (4) it was appropriate for you to deliberately run the tank empty on the freeway in order to teach Hertz a lesson, and protect future Hertz customers? No. You'd be laughed out of court and be stuck with Hertz's bill for the car.

Obviously, every specific fact pattern is different, and there could be some exceptions to the general rule. But I don't think the fact pattern as described in the OP, whereby UA breached the pilot's contract by omitting the dessert from the pilot's dinner tray and the pilot refused to fly the plane until a dessert was delivered, is such an exception.

Foxhat

One of us is a lawyer and it ain't me.

If the pilot taxied out to the end of the runway and then got off the plane your argument would make more sense. If I discovered the car had only 7/8's of a tank when I got into the car I would be fully within my rights (and have done so) to refuse the car and make them change the contract or give me a car with a full tank. The pilot's actions in this case did not put the property of the company or lives of the passengers in jeopardy as would leaving the car in the middle of a highway would.

pinniped

That might be a good analogy, because it sounds like this pilot fancies himself as some sort of rock star.

Silver Fox

That is absolute rubbish. Total and utterly. It was brown M&Ms.

pinniped

(1) If safety was a valid concern, then the pilot and the other crew could have validated whatever concern there was without the 45-minute temper tantrum. (What safety-critical responsibilities does the catering staff have, anyway? Keeping the Heineken in F cold enough?) If it's a recurring problem with that caterer jeopardizing airline safety, then handle it offline without impacting the clients.

(2) I've honestly never heard that rock stars put those riders in contracts for some sort of higher-level quality assurance or safety purposes. That sounds like at least part urban legend. Or maybe an original nugget of truth expanded to a ridiculous level in recent years. Whenever a celebrity rider finds its way onto TMZ, it's a thing of absurdity.

Foxhat

If your professor is still teaching ask him or her if they know of any company that has a reputation of screwing over their employees that also has a reputation for outstanding customer service. I doubt he or anyone on this board can do so.

While I may not like the actions this pilot took and may feel this is not the issue to showcase my principles on I also recognize that the pilots are the people who I am trusting my life to every time I fly and I would prefer to keep them happy.

travel.flier

Geez, it can't be that bad for the pilots - don't they make good salaries? Probably lots more than I make. If it's so bad, go into a different career.

pinniped

Fair enough...I just googled and read about the Van Halen M&M's rider. It is sort of what I alluded to earlier: a nugget of truth (VH apparently pioneered technical riders, and the M&M's bit does indeed have a safety/QA angle to it) that modern artists have gone hogwild with.

Interesting stuff...although I still don't believe for a second that this pilot was testing the catering crew for bigger safety issues. If that was the case, the methodology behind the troubleshooting and the behavior of the pilot likely would have been different.

EsquireFlyer

How about Wal-Mart, or Disney? You make the question harder by requiring extremes ("screwing" employees and "outstanding" customer service) but there are definitely companies that make customers happy while simultaneously treating employees unfavorably.

GoingAway

Unfortunately for them, the contracts or work terms for wal mart and Disney are what they are, and the company isn't cheating anyone out of theirperks, they just aren't promised any to begin with. That's not the case with the pilots or anything covered in this thread

EsquireFlyer

Sure. But refusing to accept deliver of a car that you are paying to drive yourself in is different from refusing to fly a plane that hundreds of passengers are paying your company to ride in. It's the total disregard for the passengers's needs, and effectively using them as bargaining chips, that makes the pilot's actions really unprofessional.

The possible loss of life is not the point of the example. You could change it to abandoning the car in a desert, rather than abandoning it on a freeway, and it would not make the renter's actions any more legally justifiable based on Hertz's failure to provide a 100% full tank of gas.

The pilot's actions in this case wasted a large amount of the passengers' time and subjected both the passengers and the airline to risk of financial losses (e.g. ticket refunds and/or compensation resulting from the delay or missed connections). Some passengers or airline may even have suffered some financial losses already that we aren't aware of, but certainly, the risk increased with the length of the pilot's delay.

The point is that the original claim I was responding to (that the airline's failure to provide two side dishes justified the pilot's refusal to fly the plane) is not legally valid. If anyone is interested in reading more about the issue of whether a minor breach by one party justifies non-performance by the other party, I suggest reading about Jacob & Young v. Kent, commonly called the "Reading pipe case."

That wasn't the question. The question was:

So I gave two examples of such companies.
Also, Wal-Mart is, at a minimum, accused of violating numerous contracts and/or statutes by mistreating their employees.

J.Edward

The way I read this is United, per their contract, is obligated to certain actions which include the supply of crew meals for the pilot/co-pilot and since UA does not not own their kitchens they rely on vendors for the production of the meals.

UA, or their agent(s), were obligated to deliver a meal, to a certain pre-defined standard, to the flight and they failed to do so effectively failing to hold up their side of the contract.

Bottom line, I don't think the blame for this rest with the pilot (if the meal had been delivered correctly the flight would have left); it rests with UA for not ensuring their subcontractors are complying with their contracts.

Thus the pilot decided to wait until the situation was rectified, which it eventually was some 45m later.

Is this a pain for passengers? Yes.

But does the pilot also have a valid, despite what customers think, reason for waiting? Yes.

Like it or hate it it seems like the pilot followed his contract, and if that hacks us as customers off, it seems our ire needs to be focused against those who drafted the contract, not those who're trying work under it.

And honestly with the current climate of "get serious" right now between ALPA and the powers that be I'd guess we'll be seeing pilots less inclined to do the company favors with cockpit staff opting instead to fly the contract. <shrug>