Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Trial set in case of flight crews suing for hazardous-duty pay

Trial is set to begin Oct. 4 in a class-action lawsuit claiming Vision Airlines Inc. of North Las Vegas pocketed tens of millions of dollars of hazard pay that was due flight crews assigned to dangerous war-related missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The trial was set after Chief U.S. District Judge for Nevada Roger Hunt on Sept. 15 denied motions by both sides to close the case based on their summary judgment motions.

Hunt found there are disputed facts that a jury will have to sort out, making the case ineligible for closure on summary judgment motions.

The trial will likely focus on two of the plaintiffs’ surviving claims, for unjust enrichment and conversion.

The legal dispute erupted in January 2009 when attorneys for former Vision pilot Gerald Hester of Colleyville, Texas, filed suit in federal court in Las Vegas claiming Hester and some 300 other current and former employees hadn’t received extra pay for flying in and out of the war zones since 2005. The lawsuit said at least $21 million was due the flight crews.

The lawsuit brought some unwanted attention to aspects of Vision’s business, including reports its aircraft were involved in CIA “rendition” flights in which alleged terror suspects may have been shuttled around the globe for undisclosed reasons. Locally, Vision is known for more mundane operations like Grand Canyon tour flights.

Vision is a government subcontractor that, according to a former pilot who has talked to the Las Vegas Sun, regularly flew passengers from Washington, D.C., to Europe and then to Kabul, Afghanistan, or Baghdad, Iraq.

The passengers typically included personnel with the CIA, the State Department and private security contractor Blackwater who were involved with antiterrorism and military operations, the former pilot said.

The former pilot and the lawsuit said that because of the danger of enemy ground fire, slow-moving Vision aircraft like Boeing 737s and 767s approaching and departing the war zones had to execute difficult maneuvers like corkscrew approaches at night.

The lawsuit said that because of the hazards associated with the flights, captains and first officers were to receive additional hazard pay of $2,500 for each take-off and landing, with flight attendants and mechanics required to receive $1,500 per flight operation.

Vision denied withholding the hazard pay and said all its flights crews were paid what was due them under their employment agreements.

But Hunt noted evidence turned up during the discovery phase of the lawsuit indicating that a government contractor that hired Vision — Computer Sciences Corporation — was billed for hazard pay by Vision with the expectation that the money would then be forwarded to the flight crews.

“Hester has shown that Vision has billed other parties with invoice lines stating a standard rate of pay for Vision’s employees and additionally a hazard bonus,” Hunt’s order said.

“It is more than conceivable that a jury could find that these line items marked ‘Hazard Duty Bonus’ rightfully belong to the employees,” Hunt wrote in his order.

James Maguire, a Vision executive who formerly supervised pilots as Vision’s director of flight operations, testified in a June deposition that in setting pay scales for the flights at issue no one ever discussed hazard pay.

There was talk of a “bonus” for flying into the war zones, Maguire testified, but he “adamantly opposed that” because it would create scheduling conflicts as crews sought the higher-paying flights as opposed to the less-dangerous flights between the United States and Europe.

“So we took the same amount of dollars, if you will, and packaged it into one-level pay...So the pay rates were elevated for everything,” he testified.

Vision CEO William Acor also testified that the company paid its employees an amount equal to or more than the amount it billed for and collected in flight deck and cabin crew salary and hazardous duty pay from the upstream contractors.

The class-action plaintiffs, however, said their expert studied Vision’s payroll records and found significant underpayments for hazardous duty as well as shortfalls in what Vision billed the upstream contractors for regular salaries.

Evidence presented so far “does not conclusively prove that the money does or does not belong to the employees, which would lead to summary judgment. It does, however, create a triable issue of fact,” Hunt wrote.

“If this money does not belong to the employees, however, it seems that it might belong to the entity who initially paid it believing that it would go to the employees, namely the United States,” the judge’s ruling said.

Separately, Hunt dismissed Vision’s claim against Hester alleging that he violated a confidentiality agreement. Vision asserted that Hester was the former pilot who talked to the Las Vegas Sun for a January 2009 story about Vision and the details about its flights in and out of the war zones.

The Las Vegas Sun has not identified the former pilot who was the source for the story, because the former pilot spoke to the Sun on the condition of anonymity.

“Vision continues to allege that Hester was the source in a Las Vegas Sun article, but has yet to produce any evidence of this allegation. It is, therefore, mere speculation,” Hunt wrote in his ruling.

Vision also complained Hester had divulged confidential information about its operations that was listed in the class-action lawsuit ­— information like: “aircraft arriving in Baghdad observe blackout procedures requiring all non-essential lights on the aircraft to be turned off; aircraft landing in Baghdad utilize a corkscrew-type procedure to stay within the area most protected by the U.S. military; aircraft arrive and depart from Baghdad and Kabul under the cover of darkness and need prior authorization from the U.S. or British military, and after Sept. 11, the United States government implemented a global strategy designed to eradicate terrorist organizations that threatened the security of the United States and its allies.”

Hunt said in his ruling that all that information was publicly available, before the lawsuit was filed, from sources including national and international newscasts and magazines.

“If information has been previously publicly disseminated it cannot be considered confidential,” Hunt wrote in his ruling. “These allegations can, therefore, only lead the court to conclude that Vision does not understand the term ‘confidential information.’”

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