Female pilot suing former employer after being told she's 'too short' to fly; Gloria Allred represen

Juliet Hotel said:
No argument. But the men were given the opportunity to train on other airplanes, she was not.
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Those men were most likely not new hires as she was. Therefore they fall under a different set of union rules as a non-probationary pilot.


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Fracpilot said:
Those men were most likely not new hires as she was. Therefore they fall under a different set of union rules as a non-probationary pilot.


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"Most likely" = "Don't know the facts."
 
Is NJ a California employer? Because if she acted like the company owed her something they can let her go.

The hiring of Allred is a flag to me.
 
Meanwhile, the defense is gearing up....

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''Get Paul on the phone, will ya.??''
 
flyingron said:
That's not how it works. She needs to show that such a standard was uniquely applied to women.
As stated, fitting your body to the controls of an aircraft DEFINITELY IS a standard applied to both sexes (even if you assume that women are predominately short, and men are predominately tall).
NetJets won't emply you to fly the Phenom if you're too tall either. The cockpit is ill-designed and it can be hard to move the control stick through its full range if you're over 6'. NetJets makes pilots demonstrate they can slalom their legs out of the way before they'll allow them to be checked out.
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Your statement is not how it works. There is such a thing as disparate impact. If the Phenom is the gateway airplane and it is one that more women would not be able to fly than men, then there is the potential for the plaintiff to prove that using the Phenom as a the only gateway discriminates against women as a group and Netjets could be found guilty.
 
EdFred said:
As I said earlier, if I show up to a construction site without a hard hat after being told to wear a hard hat, I should be be fired. I shouldn't show up and expect to get or anticipate getting a management position because I didn't bring a hard hat.
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Have you ever been asked your height before being hired to fly? I have not. I have never heard of anyone being told to bring a cushion for flight training.
 
Kristin said:
Your statement is not how it works. There is such a thing as disparate impact. If the Phenom is the gateway airplane and it is one that more women would not be able to fly than men, then there is the potential for the plaintiff to prove that using the Phenom as a the only gateway discriminates against women as a group and Netjets could be found guilty.
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You know, that's a really interesting statement and honestly I haven't looked at it that way. Does it mean that every job must be accessible to every human?
 
Fracpilot said:
Those men were most likely not new hires as she was. Therefore they fall under a different set of union rules as a non-probationary pilot.


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If they are not new hires, then the earlier statement that the Phenom is the entry level aircraft must not be correct. There is some tension between those two facts/pseudo facts.
 
MetalCloud said:
Is NJ a California employer? Because if she acted like the company owed her something they can let her go.
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I don't think being in an at-will employment state makes an employer immune to federal protected-class laws.

https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/protected-classes-under-anti-discrimination-laws.html

The hiring of Allred is a flag to me.
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i'm pretty sure that ad-hominem arguments about plaintiff's attorneys are not allowed in court.
 
PaulS said:
You know, that's a really interesting statement and honestly I haven't looked at it that way. Does it mean that every job must be accessible to every human?
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No! There is such a thing as a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification. But using an airplane as a mandatory gateway aircraft that excluded more women than men, could be legally problematic. It would be hard to say that reaching the pedals without using a cushion is a requirement to be a pilot, especially if there are a number of aircraft in their fleet that women would not have an issue flying. Now if all the operated were Phenoms, they might have a much better defense.
 
Everskyward said:
But she would need to prove that she was terminated because she is female. Unless she can prove that NetJets has a habit of doing this, or if NetJets was stupid enough to mention it somewhere, I think she will have a hard time winning.
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The strongest argument I saw in the news stories was the part about male pilots whose size was a problem in the aircraft receiving different treatment than she did, but I don't know the totality of the evidence, and even if I did, I don't consider myself qualified to predict the outcome.
 
Kristin said:
Have you ever been asked your height before being hired to fly? I have not. I have never heard of anyone being told to bring a cushion for flight training.
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Nope but I have been told to wear a hard hat on construction sites. Also required to wear steel toed boots on other jobs. Same as needing a cushion. Safety requirement.
 
Kristin said:
How do you know she had 16 hours? Was that in the complaint?
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Standard time off. Could have been 12 could have been 20. It did say next day so figure 4pm to 8am.
 
I read the complaint. If the other 3 pilots transferred were also short then I could see her case. Is the other female that was in the group of 10 still there?

My guess is from the 22nd to the 28th (more than 16 hours) there may have been much complaining by the plaintiff. Check ride fail - and they probably knew she would - makes for a justified dismissal. I could be wrong but that's my guess.
 
EdFred said:
Nope but I have been told to wear a hard hat on construction sites. Also required to wear steel toed boots on other jobs. Same as needing a cushion. Safety requirement.
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She was told to buy a cushion or taller shoes and she did just that.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
She was told to buy a cushion or taller shoes and she did just that.
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Yeah I read the complaint after that post. 6 days to figure out how to make it work to pass the check ride.

There's jobs I'm probably too tall for. That's just the way it is sometimes.
 
EdFred said:
I read the complaint. If the other 3 pilots transferred were also short then I could see her case.
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Maybe NetJets' attorney will argue that being too tall for an airplane is not "similarly situated " to being too short. Whether the judge or the jury will buy that argument, I have no idea.
 
MetalCloud said:
And this was two years ago? Pffft.
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This quote from the complaint may help explain the delay:

31.Plaintiff filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) on August 24, 2017, Charge No. 532-2017-01504.

32.Plaintiff received a Right to Sue Letter dated May 15, 2019, attached hereto as Exhibit 1.
​
It's not clear why it took two years for EEOC to issue the Right to Sue letter, however.
 
Palmpilot said:
Maybe NetJets' attorney will argue that being too tall for an airplane is not "similarly situated " to being too short. Whether the judge or the jury will buy that argument, I have no idea.
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Will be interesting after both sides present their case.
 
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