PAL wins P3.3-million lawsuit vs AWOL pilot

By Rudy Santos (The Philippine Star) Updated October 12, 2010

MANILA, Philippines - For violating his contractual obligations and training agreement with Philippine Airlines in 2006, a former PAL pilot was ordered by the Makati regional trial court (RTC) to pay the country’s flag carrier millions of pesos in training fees and other penalties.

In a decision dated Sept. 15, Makati RTC Branch 133 Judge Elpidio Calis ordered pilot Zenon Lukban to pay PAL P1.5 million plus interest, at the rate of six percent annually, for the cost of his training at the PAL Aviation School.

The judge also told Lukban to reimburse PAL the amount of P1.87 million, plus interest, for the cost of training his replacement, as well as P50,000 in attorney’s fees.

Calis said one of the conditions of Lukban’s training agreement required him to serve the airline for five years in exchange for the cost of training shouldered by PAL.

Court records show that only two years after completing his training, Lukban, on April 19, 2006, wrote a letter of resignation to chief pilot Capt. Rolly Canlas. His resignation was to take effect on May 20, 2006.

On May 8, 2006, PAL management officially rejected Lukban’s resignation, saying this was in violation of his training contract, which was to expire on July 2009. The agreement also required the pilot to file his notice of resignation 120 days before the intended date of resignation. This requirement has since changed to 180 days after the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) declared the job of pilots and aircraft mechanics as “mission critical skills.”

But since Lukban went AWOL (absent without official leave) immediately after tendering his resignation, the airline filed administrative and civil cases against the erring pilot.

The RTC’s order comes on the heels of PAL’s move to lodge multi-million peso damage suits against 27 pilots and first officers who resigned in August 2010 to take higher-paying jobs in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia. So far, 16 pilots and first officers are facing charges of abandonment of duty and breach of contract before a Makati RTC.

The abrupt resignations forced PAL, which is currently mired in a labor dispute with its cabin crew and ground unions, to cancel some of its domestic flights last July.