B.C. Supreme Court enforces training bond agreement

[golden hawk]

http://www.ehlaw.ca/services/aviation_b ... onds.shtml

http://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcsc/doc/20 ... ultIndex=1

[AuxBatOn]

Sounds like she was a piece of work...

If you enter an agreement, honor it.

[tipsails]

I am curious if they would have come after her for the training costs if she wouldn't have filed an initial suit. They would have likely cut their losses and moved on.

[Meatservo]

Well honestly. Finish reading the court record and tell me that whole situation doesn't sound like a shit-show. Someone who claims to have previously been an A320 captain applies for a job as a Citation F.O., shows up without a valid medical, flies with a lapsed instrument rating, and performs poorly in their training and on the line... I think she's fortunate the court isn't particularly well equipped to investigate people who apply for jobs under false pretences. Seems to me someone with the experience she claimed to have should have been easily able to fit into a medevac outfit in a junior position on a small plane. Why would such an "experienced" pilot apply for this crappy job, anyway? Something is fishy to me about this pilot's stated work history. You don't often hear about check-pilots flying with A320 captains in a little Citation and finding them marginally unfit for the position of F.O.

I know there's two sides to every story, but when you read how the court looks at these things after the fact, you can see that in business dealings, hurt feelings and boorish behaviour on the operator's part don't count for much. If you feel like you aren't getting a fair shake due to discrimination of some kind, find a way to document it, at least.

[digits_]

Is it normal that a company requires you to pay the training bond if they fire you ? Eg: you are hired, sign a bond. They kick you out, you still have to pay the bond ?

[AuxBatOn]

If you are laid off for work, no (and the training agreement she said said as much). If you are fired for incompetence, absolutely.

[Liftdump]

Her dog shit in the office. That's hilarious. Bottom line you pay peanuts you get monkey's
You both deserve each other. Next case

[digits_]

Her dog shit in the office. That's hilarious. Bottom line you pay peanuts you get monkey's
You both deserve each other. Next case

I missed that part. Hehe wonderful !

[aviatrix444]

"Psychologically wounded" from her captain getting fed up correcting her. Anyone else hear some really tiny violins?

[Diadem]

What kind of company doesn't actually verify the credentials of new hires? "Oh, you say you're a doctor? Good enough for me. Here's a scalpel." And the CP uses emoticons in company correspondence: "Should be a good refresher for you I guess ☺." Very professional...

[JoeShmoe]

That was an interesting read, I enjoyed reading between the lines of the unbiased judge lingo.

I was rooting for the girl, because you know, training bonds suck, but wow she seems like a peice of work!

After reading the whole thing it looks like they weren't gonna come after her for the $23000 until after she took them to court. I'm curious i don't know much about court proceedings but it seems like she represented herself, and did a pretty brutal job of it.

[pianokeys]

Aviation is such a tight community, I wonder what shes thinking when she stumbles across this thread...

Be careful of your actions. And understand that what you do now, can and will have an affect on the future. Essentially, shes branded herself as un-hireable.

[cdnpilot77]

Aviation is such a tight community, I wonder what shes thinking when she stumbles across this thread...

Be careful of your actions. And understand that what you do now, can and will have an affect on the future. Essentially, shes branded herself as un-hireable.

I'm not so sure about that. A quick Google search reveals that there is a person by the same name who at some point was a Citation Instructor at Flight Safety. Not sure if this was pre or post Carson air though.

That was a pretty interesting read! A bit of an eye opener for those involved in hiring.

[Meatservo]

Well, another quick Google search and a visit to "Linked In" reveals that the 4000 hours she has accumulated have been building up since the late eighties, also her claims to be an A320 Captain are based on having done the simulator course, but I can't find any sign she ever had a job flying one because there is no Airbus time in her actual breakdown of hours and work experience. She seems to spend her time flying light jets for a couple dozen hours at one place or another before moving on, and in her spare time, haunting various "women in aviation" functions around the world. Oh, and also for some reason "Google" produced a copy of a letter she wrote to the Confederate Air Force, asking for a job flying warbirds on the airshow circuit for the 2015 show season!

This is what I mean about the court being ill-equipped to check out someone's actual suitability for the job they applied for, which would give them some insight into the kind of wing-nut they are dealing with here. The operations manager's stated opinion that she must have been some kind of "seat warmer" at her previous job seems like a pretty astute observation. Absolutely she is qualified to be an F.O., that is if she had bothered to have her license in order, but if the judge had looked into her work history and had known anything about the industry, he would have seen that this woman basically applied for the job under false pretences in the first place. Her resume looks impressive at first glance, but completely falls apart under scrutiny.

[Meecka]

letter she wrote to the Confederate Air Force, asking for a job flying warbirds on the airshow circuit for the 2015 show season!

Weep for the Warbird world if that ever comes to fruition. I read thru the court case, and as I did I got more and more Pi**ed off. She's a bad example of women in aviation, gives us a bad name. I'm glad the court basically threw the twit's case out. The thought that she's setting an example for young women who want to get into aviation makes me sick.

[cncpc]

This is a very poor case on which to base a broad claim that all training bonds are legal. They aren't. Not by a long shot. And I favour training bonds as a means of reasonable employer protection against unscrupulous people getting a free ride on training.

First off, this woman represented herself. In British Columbia, where the legal profession is seeing its income stream seriously depleted by self represented litigants, it's a very bad idea to represent yourself against a member of the Law Society. You have to remember that judges are also members of the Law Society, and they seriously believe in the value of their professional credentials. Consequently, they look down on those who have the temerity to think they can argue law. In BC, you can be legally correct on every point, and some judges will still see the lawyers case with eyes wide and favorably open, and be blind to yours.

Here's a checklist of what to consider in a training bond.

A bond is a contract. It must meet all of the requirements for a contract to be valid. Here are the live issues in most training bonds

• The contract cannot contemplate an illegal activity. (This one probably didn't)
  
  There must be an agreement, and consideration must pass. (Pretty straightforward here)
  
  There must be no imbalance of power in the contracting, i.e. the contract must not be oppressive to one party. (Good argument a lawyer would have made here)

Whenever a training bond contains a claim by the employer that it is engaged in flight training, or some such form of words, the employer must be licensed as a flight training unit if it proposes to "bill" the pilot for training. If it's not, then the contract is void as being contrary to public policy. TC is onto that game, and potentially could levy a fine for every flight charged for. Remember the Regency bit selling Navajo PPCs?

State an hourly rate for training anywhere in the bond contract and you'd better have a FTU license. Even stating that you are in some fashion offering flight training for money, even a lump sum, and you are outside the law if you aren't an FTU. And your bond is worthless to the employer. All the 702, 703, 704, 705 paperwork on your wall doesn't legally allow you to charge anyone for flight training, including an employee.

In this case, the issue doesn't arise. Carson simply paid for Flight Safety training, i.e. loaned your one the money to train somewhere else, and that's all good.

Many training bonds do have some element of imbalance of power in them. They usually manifest in some lump sum amount that may be a little bit over demonstrable cost or a whole lot. This one was 25 grand. Certainly a lawyer would have raised that with the judge. If Carson could show that was the actual payment to Flight Safety, no problem. It probably was close.

What was oppressive in this one was that the bond was signed prior to training. It was for 25,000. If your one had washed out at 3 hours, she still owed 25,000. Had that happened, no court would have upheld that, even if she was self represented. So that term of the contract was oppressive in certain factual patterns. This wasn't one of them.

So what's a legal bond? Don't charge for flight training. Have both parties agree that the employer, in training the new hire, will incur significant expenses in training the new hire, and will only do so in exchange for an agreement of a set period of employment being agreed by the new hire. The new hire must explicitly state that he or she agrees that leaving employment without just cause will result in damages to the employer, and agree to a formula based on pro rating the time worked vs the bond period as a way of determining the amount of damages the employer is entitled to.

I've only ever seen one bond and it was illegal in several terms. But I expect that most bonds prepared by lawyers, instead of somebody who sat next to a lawyer on a plane once, are of the type I've described in the paragraph above. So most training bonds are legal and morally justified.

I do think that even some lawyers may not pick up on the illegal flight school bit as a means of voiding a bond.

These bonds which purport to charge new hires for flight training also raise some difficult Revenue Canada implications. On a reasonable interpretation, the amount charged is revenue to the employer at time of training. The payout on a month by month basis is also income to the new hire as time goes on. That's OK, if there is a bill for flight training, and Revenue Canada will allow that cost, and the employer can offset some of the revenue in its general cost structure and hourly aircraft costs, but I sense there'd be some left over as profit on most bonds.

[SuperchargedRS]

If you are laid off for work, no (and the training agreement she said said as much). If you are fired for incompetence, absolutely.

And I'm guessing in that case most are always fired for incompetence, cheaper that way.

I got laid off once, owner of the company was a cheap asshat, filed for unemployment and all of a sudden I was fired for all sorts of reasons, everything form incompetence to personal internet usage, lucky for me I had the signed separation letter, case closed.

Her dog shit in the office. That's hilarious. Bottom line you pay peanuts you get monkey's
You both deserve each other. Next case

Yup.

[aviatrix444]

I had plenty of great pilot role models, men and women. But it's true, stories like this cause SOME people to paint us all with the brush. While doing my low timer trip most people were amazing and welcoming, but one CP told me straight up "the last girl I hired ended up being a twit, so I'm not interested in hiring any more shepilots."

Which is fine by me. It sure is much easier to weed out the idiots when they come right out with it.

[xsbank]

That's for sure Aviatrix, it definitely works both ways. As my old mother used to say, "...you had a narrow escape there."

[xsbank]

I can't believe she got hired without a medical nor an IFR and they blamed her for that? The company's procedures are beyond Mickey Mouse; like somebody else said, "...they were perfect for each other..."