JAL pilots won in the court
Hello,
I am new here, and I am not a commercial pilot. My job takes me frequently to Japan, and recently I saw a newspaper article regarding pay dispute between Japan Airlines’ pilot and the company.
The newspaper article said that Japan Airlines has “long hour duty compensation” (directly translated from Japanese term used by Japan Airlines) for pilots on duty on long non-stop flights, such as NRT-JFK and NRT-LHR. As a part of cost cutting measure, on April of 1998 Japan Airlines reduced the amount of “long hour duty compensation” to 30% - 70% of what it used to be, depends on a flight on duty. Japan Airlines did this without an approval from pilot’s union, and without notifying pilots of such change.
48 Japan Airlines’ pilots with captain’s rank sued Japan Airlines regarding this incident. The judge in the case made the decision favoring pilots, and ordered Japan Airlines to pay pilots the difference in the compensation.
What got my attention was the pay of Japan Airlines pilots. Obviously, specific monetary amount of pilots’ paycheck had to come out during the case was in the court. Those informations become public. I am sure those 48 Japan Airlines pilots are most likely to be captains at the top of the seniority list. But according to the court document, the average annual pay for those 48 pilots is US$ 241,666 (calculated from US$ 1 = JYE 120). Also, the difference in the monthly paycheck regarding this dispute come out be maximum of US$ 2417, which amount to somewhere around 12% of their paycheck.
I have no idea about pay scale of commercial pilots. Sure I would like to get paid half of what they are getting pay! Compare with captains in European or US major commercial carriers on the top of the seniority list, is this a lot or less? According to the newspaper article, if the appeals court would not turn this down, then 1800 Japan Airline’s pilots can expect a check for a back pay.