Pilot ‘sacked after sleeping during f light’ sues Virgin for £1.7million
‘Process was rigged against him’
A PILOT is suing Virgin Atlantic for £1.7million after he was sacked following rumours he had fallen asleep while in charge of a long-haul flight.
Captain Mike Lawson, 48, claims bosses at the airline turned against him after the London to Hong Kong flight in September 2015.
During the flight, both his co-pilots fell sick and Mr Lawson decided to fly the last eight hours by himself instead of landing at a closer airport.
Rumours later began to spread among Virgin staff that he had taken ‘40 winks’ while his colleagues were sick and away from the flight deck. Colleagues became reluctant to work with him, even though he reassured them the rumours were ‘completely unfounded’.
Mr Lawson was ‘stood down’ from flying duties between October and November 2015 as Virgin conducted an investigation. Its results were not published and it left him suffering from stress and anxiety because ‘he felt he could not defend himself against the rumours’, an employment tribunal heard. Virgin fired Mr Lawson in May 2017 on that grounds that he failed to pass two flight simulator tests in 2016.
The pilot, who had worked for the airline for 19 years, claims he was unfairly dismissed and is suing the company for £1.7million.
He claims the assessor who conducted the tests was ‘unnecessarily aggressive’ to him. He is also suing for disability discrimination on the basis that he was mentally ill when he took the tests.
Mr Lawson says this was caused in part by his inability to defend himself against the rumours and says his bosses should have considered retraining and re-testing him.
His disability claim was thrown out by an employment tribunal in January last year.
But it was reinstated by Judge Matthew Gullick at the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London last month after the pilot appealed.
Judge Gullick said Mr Lawson’s ‘whole identity was tightly linked with being a pilot for Virgin’ and described how his career became difficult after the Hong Kong flight.
‘Both of his co-pilots fell violently sick at the same time, leaving him alone in charge of the jet, ‘ he said.
‘He says the incident gave rise to rumours and gossip among his colleagues. Such rumours were untrue, but nevertheless his colleagues were reluctant to work with him.’
Judge Gullick highlighted an internal Virgin meeting a month after the flight when he was asked if he had taken ‘40 winks while the [flight officers] were out of the flight deck’. ‘He describes feeling ostracised... and becoming increasingly isolated,’ the judge said.
‘He said he dreaded going to work knowing the Hong Kong flight would be brought up.’
Mr Lawson, who now works for another airline, believes the ‘process was rigged against him’ because Virgin had decided to get rid of him after the Hong Kong flight.
However, Virgin claims that Mr Lawson was legitimately dismissed and denies his accusations, as well as contesting his claim that he was disabled at the time of the tests.
The airline claims that Mr Lawson, who lives near Brighton, ‘exaggerated’ some of his symptoms and that his claims are not ‘corroborated by the medical evidence’.
A full tribunal will be heard at a future date to be set.