COURT RULING CONCERNING "CONFIRMATION OF NON-EXISTENCE OF LEGAL OBLIGATION TO COMPLY WITH THE WORK RULE UNILATERALLY IMPLEMENTED BY JAPAN AIRLINES IN 1993"

Excerpt from the ruling and the entire translated text of the reasons for the ruling in the summary section. (This English language document is prepared by Japan Airlines Flight Crew Union.)

Tokyo District Court

Plaintiffs: Members of Japan Airlines Flight Crew UnionDefendant: Japan Airlines

Date of the filing of the lawsuit: April 22, 1994

Date of the Court Ruling: November 25, 1999

COURT RULING BY TOKYO DISTRICT COURT (Excerpt)

(1) MINIMUM CREW ONE LANDING TWO-CREW AIRCRAFT

Tokyo District Court affirms that :

-There is no obligation on the part of the plaintiffs to perform flight duties where scheduled flight time exceeds 9 hours or scheduled duty time exceeds 13 hours within any consecutive 24 hours on two-pilot-configuration aircraft with one scheduled landing without augmented crew.

(Note: Flight time is from "blocks-out" till "blocks-in". Duty time is from show-up until the completion of post flight duty.)

(2) MINIMUM CREW TWO LANDINGS

Tokyo District Court affirms that:

-There is no obligation on the part of the plaintiffs to perform flight duties where scheduled flight time exceeds 8 hours 30 minutes or scheduled duty time exceeds 13 hours within any consecutive 24 hours with two scheduled landings without augmented crew.

(3) REGARDING COMPANY'S POLICY OF "PRINCIPLE OF COMPLETION OF FLIGHT DUTY"

Tokyo District Court affirms that:

-There is no obligation on the part of the plaintiffs to complete their flight duty (i.e. to arrive at all scheduled destinations) in such circumstances where flight time limitation or duty time limitation set forth for specific number of landings has already been exceeded, or where such flight time limitation or duty time limitation will be exceeded if the flight crews continue their flight duty unless the pilot-in-command judges, on the basis of consultation with other flight crew members, that safety of flight is not compromised in any way.

(Note: This part is about unscheduled occasions of prolonged flight/duty hours due to weather diversion or departure/arrival delay due to mechanical troubles etc. "To complete flight duty" means "to arrive at all scheduled destination(s) on that scheduled flight assignment.)

(4) DOMESTIC FLIGHTS

Tokyo District Court affirms that:

-Flight assignment for domestic flights shall not exceed 3 consecutive days.

(5) STAND-BY DUTY FOR INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT

Tokyo District Court affirms that:

-With respect to stand-by duty for international flights, there is no obligation on the part of the plaintiffs to perform flight assignment unless such flight assignment is for either of the two flights specified in advance or a flight that is scheduled to depart between the departure times of the aforementioned two specified flights.

The end of the excerpt of the court ruling

(English translation, itemization and the notes by Japan Airlines Flight Crew Union. November 26, 1999)

REASONS FOR THE COURT JUDGEMENT (In the summary section of the court ruling)

In this lawsuit, the plaintiffs whose professions are first officers and flight engineers seek the judgement of the court that the work rules changed by the defendant are not valid, that the working condition of the abrogated work agreement prevails, and that no obligation exists on the part of the plaintiffs to perform duties beyond the scope of the abrogated work agreement.

Reasons for the ruling: For the sake of safe flight operations, while it is necessary to ensure that the performance of aircraft, aircraft maintenance and the flying skill of flight crew etc. meet required quality standards, it is also necessary to ensure that the performance of flight crew do not suffer any degradation/deficiency through the accumulation of fatigue. Therefore, the Civil Aeronautics Law regulates the flight time and the non-flight duty time for the flight crew by requiring the operators to formulate flight crew schedules based on the standards specified in each operator's Operation Manual for which approval by the Minister of the Ministry of Transport is required. However, the degree and process of flight crew fatigue can be greatly and diversely affected by a variety of separate and specific circumstances of different flights including flight schedule diagrams(timetables). Therefore scheduled air carrier operators must not assume that the safety of flight is ensured as long as they comply with the standards specified in their Operation Manuals approved by the Minister of the Ministry of Transport. It is necessary for scheduled air carrier operators to formulate practical and appropriate flight crew schedules with due consideration to separate and specific circumstances of different flights using the standards specified in their Operation Manuals as a framework of scheduling. Apart from the regulations by Civil Aeronautics Law, scheduled air carrier operators are responsible for the safety of passengers on the basis of passenger transportation contracts, and they are also responsible for the safety of flight crew on the basis of labor contracts. Therefore the aforementioned interpretation is rational/reasonable from this point of view as well.

If an operator establishes or changes a standard of working condition by creating or changing work rules, it enables the operator to issue a work order to the fullest extent within that standard, and it will relate directly to the safety of flight operations. Therefore the rationality/reasonableness of the establishment or change of work rule can be affirmed only when there is adequate rational/reasonable evidence/grounds to prove that in practicality the flight operations do not suffer any safety deficiency/problem if flight crew fly for the length of flight time specified in the proposed work rule taking into consideration the fatigue accumulated through duty or work performed by the flight crew prior to that flight.

In order to determine whether the rationality/reasonableness of the establishment or change of work rules can be affirmed or not, examination and judgement have to be made from scientific and professional/technical points of view to determine;- whether the content of the work rule is rational/reasonable for the purpose of governing the specific work involved,

- and whether the work rule is not inferior to the work rules of other airlines (including foreign airlines),

- and whether the work rule is a rational/reasonable one without any particular defects/deficiencies/problems when it is reviewed in conjunction to the past experiences of actual flights and the actual instances of aircraft accidents in the past.

However, in recent years, while the airline industry has had to adopt 24-hour round-the-clock operation to meet social and economic demands, the improvement of aircraft performance has enabled prolonged hours of uninterrupted flight with a less number of minimum required flight crew in the flight deck. (Note: This refers to aircraft without flight engineers.) This has actually lead to a situation where the application of conventional standards can no longer meet the actual operations.

Then, in the cases where conventional standards are exceeded, it can be concluded that such operation is based on rational/reasonable grounds provided that;

- there is an adequate warrant/evidence from scientific and professional/technical points of view that the content of the work rule is rational/reasonable enough to govern the specific work involved,

and

- the employer (scheduled air carrier operator), after adequately evaluating the safety of operation in advance, takes effective and appropriate measures against hazards/dangers,

and

- the employer (scheduled air carrier operator) decides the content in such a way that it is within a reasonable extent within which the safety of flight is not compromised in any way,

and

- after implementing the work rule, the employer (scheduled air carrier operator) establishes a feed-back system by which the operator gathers necessary information and make assessment of the safety and take appropriate corrective actions whenever there is any doubt/concern/problem, and such feed-back system is determined to be functioning effectively.

To affirm the rationality/reasonableness of the cases where conventional standards are exceeded, evaluation and judgment have to be made from the following points of view:

- To what extent the employer (scheduled air carrier operator), before establishing the work rule, took into consideration the separate and specific circumstances of different flights as described above, and upon what grounds the employer decided the content of the work rule.

- The actual situations of flight operations based on the implemented work rule.

- Whether a feed-back system is established and maintained in such a way that the actual situation of flight operations conducted based on the work rule is evaluated, post-flight appraisal of the safety of flight is performed, and appropriate corrective actions are taken whenever there is any doubt/concern/problem.

-Whether such feed-back system is determined to be functioning effectively.

As to a change of work rules where such a change is detrimental to the interests of employees, as the judicial precedents of Supreme Court rulings show, judgements have to be made as to whether adequate rationality exists, even with due consideration of the detriments to the interest of the employees, to affirm that a particular clause (in a work rule) has judicially binding norm in the relationship between the employer and the employee from standpoints of the necessity of the change and the rationality/reasonableness of the contents of the work rule after such change.

If the contents of the changed work rule is such that the hours of service of flight duty is so excessively long as to be detrimental to the safety of flight, the rationality/reasonableness of the content of the work rule is denied/disaffirmed. Furthermore, since more than permissible amount of hazard/danger/threat to the safety of life and body of flight crew exists, the degree of detriments to the interest of the employees is extraordinarily large. Therefore, no rationality/reasonableness exists to affirm the judicially binding norm in the implemented work rule even if such changes had been highly necessary, and it has to be concluded that the changed work rule has no legal binding power for the employees who are opposed to the changes of the work rules.

Therefore, no matter whether it is in the case of formulation of new work rules or in the case of changes of existing work rules, the rationality/reasonableness of the new rules or the changed rules has to be judged comprehensively from the aforementioned points of view.

The defendant changed the work rules of flight crewmembers (the work rules under this lawsuit), and implemented a flight time/duty time limitation where the maximum flight time is 11 hours and the maximum duty time is 15 hours depending on the time of day of reporting(company show-up).

This flight time/duty time limitation, with respect to the two-pilot configuration aircraft, is outstandingly long in duration as compared with those of other airlines (including foreign airlines), and it is not compatible with the prevailing standards.

Before the defendant changed the work rules, after receiving a official notice/decree from the Chief of Technical Department of the Ministry of Transport, the defendant changed its Operations Manual to replicate the content of the official notice, and the defendant made the change of work rules pertaining to this lawsuit on the basis of the changed Operations Manual.

When the defendant decided the content of the work rule, the defendant did not consider separate and specific circumstances of different flights, and it relied solely on the Final Report by the Study Committee on which the aforementioned official notice was based.

(Note: The Study Committee is a committee (defunct) established in 1990 for the study of the crew complement for long range flight operations by JAPA- Japan Aircraft Pilot Association).

The Study Committee concluded that the amount of workload of the flight crews of two-crew configuration aircraft without crew augmentation is equal to or lower than the amount of workload of the flight crew of three-crew configuration aircraft without crew augmentation, and the Committee proposed a maximum scheduled flight time of 12 hours for two-crew aircraft on the basis of past experiences of extended range operations of three-crew aircraft. (Note: No crew augmentation/minimum crew/ one landing)

However, a long range flight across multiple time zones causes disruption of circadian rhythms (body clock) of flight crew, and it also causes sleep disorder (sleep deficit). With a prolonged uninterrupted flight operation, the level of the performance and alertness of flight crew decline as time progresses, and the problem of flight crew complacency (unique to long-range flights) arises. Therefore, having flight crew fly a long-range flight without any rest period induces a danger of serious errors by flight crews.

The levels of performance and the alertness of flight crew start to decline after 8 to 9 hours of flight after take off. On new-generation two-crew configuration aircraft with minimum crew, when some unusual/abnormal conditions occur, the amount of workload of captain or copilot is larger than that of three-crew configuration aircraft with minimum crew. Therefore, if some unusual/abnormal conditions occur on two-crew configuration aircraft with minimum crew after 8 to 9 hours of flight after take off, the level of safety of two-crew configuration aircraft is inferior to that of three-crew configuration aircraft.

Therefore, the past records/experiences of long-range flights of three-crew configuration aircraft with minimum crew do not constitute any evidence/grounds for the safety of flight of two-crew configuration aircraft with minimum crew. Thus the proposal made by the Study Committee is not based on any rational grounds, and the proposal is not rational/reasonable.

Thus the work rule pertaining to this lawsuit is not rational/reasonable from scientific, professional/technical points of view. It is disaffirmed that the defendant made adequate study of the level of safety in advance, and it is disaffirmed that the defendant decided the content in such a way that the safety of flight is not compromised.

A feed-back system is established and maintained in such a way that, after the implementation of the work rule, the operator gathers necessary information and make assessment of safety and take appropriate corrective actions whenever there is any doubt/concern/problem. However, the Court has concluded that the operator's feedback system is not functioning. Therefore, the Court does not affirm the rationality/reasonableness of the content of the pertaining provisions of the work rule.

Under this kind of circumstances, it is rational/reasonable to understand that the reasonable intentions of the two parties involved in labor contract are to retain/maintain the working conditions which existed before the implementation of the work rule pertaining to this lawsuit.

Therefore the Court affirms as are described in the main text 2-1.

(Note: refer to the excerpt of court ruling in the first section of this document)

With respect to other claims by the plaintiffs, as are stated in the main text of the ruling, those claims which are not legitimate for such reasons as the lack of benefit from the court ruling are rejected. For legitimate claims, the Courts studied them from the aforementioned standpoints. Among the claims made by the plaintiffs, the Court affirms the non-existence of the obligation in the areas of the flight time/duty time limitation for minimum crew with two scheduled landings, the company's principle of completion of flight, the number of consecutive days of domestic flights, and the standby duty to the extent stated in the main text of the ruling. The rest of the claims are dismissed for the lack of reasons.

----The end of the reasons for the ruling in the summary section----

(The English translation and notes by Japan Airlines Flight Crew Union. November 29, 1999)