Originally Posted by
Airbanda
Presumably it is normal when an airline goes bust but with continuing operations as with MAEL that assets are vested in ATT?
If so then I don't then I don't think there is much of a regulatory conflict. ATT will operate at 'arm's length' from CAA HQ. It's fairly common for government departments and similar to own/fund such bodies and the outfits themselves are very protective of their independence.
As to the use of NDAs I don't know enough of the facts to comment.
I am not sure how normal it is for the ATT to become shareholders in companies. I cannot find any other examples in the rest of the world where CAA officials have taken ownership of companies they regulate. Even if it is a trust operating at arm's length from the CAA, it raises all sorts of difficult questions.
Employees are creditors of a businesses, and as such are entitled to their contractual notice and redundancy. If a company goes into administration very quickly without warning and consulting employees, the creditors are off the hook for the redundancy and pay in lieu of notice payments which are passed onto the National Insurance Fund. Statutory redundancy and pay in lieu of notice payments from the National Insurance Fund are capped much lower than the contractual amounts owed to employees.
Those that were employed by Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd would have preferred to have been given warning about what was going on, and likely to happen. Employees should have been consulted about the breakup of the business and options to transfer, or work their notice whilst looking for a new job, but instead the business was broken up and sold with the ATT/CAA becoming shareholders in the space of a week.
There would have been huge financial costs associated with restructuring properly had consultations about redundancy and transfers of employment took place. Instead the restructuring took place using NDA's and without employee involvement.
Had a proper restructuring exercise taken place, there would undoubtedly have been some airlines not having sufficient engineers to continue. Thomas Cook outsourced their engineering arm to Monarch Aircraft Engineering Ltd a couple of months before MAEL went into administration. Should the CAA have allowed Thomas Cook to dump its engineers into a company that another part of the CAA, the ATT, would make bankrupt in a matter of months?
I just don't think that a regulator should become shareholders and actively wind up companies they regulate, it just allows creditors to maximise profits at the expense of employees and I do not believe a regulator should be complicit in this.
Here is a short video highlighting some of the issues: