The pilot was working for Virgin Australia when the false complaints were made. Photo / Supplied
The pilot was working for Virgin Australia when the false complaints were made. Photo / Supplied
A pilot who received "malicious" complaints that he was getting drunk before a flight and was seen emerging from an airport bathroom with a woman, is fighting to have the informant identified so he can take a defamation lawsuit against them.
The pilot says the complaints - which were quickly found to be false - caused him immense stress while an investigation was conducted by the Civil Aviation Authority here and its Australian counterpart.
"When I was first made aware of the allegations I became incredibly distressed, I barely slept for three weeks. I was tormented," he said.
"I lived in constant fear that another complaint would be made."
In order to launch a defamation case a plaintiff must know who has defamed them. However, the CAA won't name the person who made the allegations, claiming it would be a breach of privacy.
So the pilot has taken his case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal which met today in Wellington to decide whether the Privacy Act should be superseded and the complainant ousted.
Anonymous complaints
According the summary of facts the first complaint was made in August 2017 when the pilot was staying at the Rydges Hotel in Wellington while on layover.
Someone contacted the CAA and said they'd seen the man drinking at the bar prior to piloting a plane to Brisbane.
Then on another occasion a member of the public claimed they'd seen him leaving the women's bathroom with a woman at an airport in Australia.
The pilot, who was working for Virgin Australia at the time, was then subject to an investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority and its Australian counterpart, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
He told the tribunal that the CAA treated him like he was guilty and that he needed to prove his innocence.
"Everywhere I seemed to turn with both regulators it was just a brick wall," he said.
"It just seemed like a member of the public could write anything they want to pull down someone operating as a pilot and make up information that would be taken so seriously.
"It felt as if some random person was taken so seriously compared to me, and I was given no ability to defend myself."
The pilot was working for Virgin Australia when the false complaints were made. Photo / Supplied
The pilot said he wasn't even given any information about when the incidents were supposed to have occurred and had to do his own research, even going so far as to source CCTV footage of the bar from the Rydges Hotel.
That footage confirmed he had been at the bar to collect milk for his breakfast, and a geo-tracking app on his phone confirmed he was in a taxi on the way to the airport when according to the complainant he was getting drunk at the bar.
The pilot then had to undergo liver and blood tests to prove he wasn't an alcoholic and took extended sick leave because he was too stressed to fly an aeroplane.
The pilot said that even though the investigation was kept confidential, even from his employer, that "Chinese whispers got around very quickly".
"Rumours grew up around these allegations, many of my colleagues believed the allegations.
"Gossip is rife within the aviation industry."
In terms of who the informant could be, the pilot hazarded a guess that a woman who sent him a Facebook message years after the saga could have been the source.
He told the tribunal how she had simultaneously professed her love for him, while also cryptically apologising for "ruining his life".
Informant Privacy
The Privacy Commissioner has already conducted an investigation into the incident in 2018 and found there were no grounds to release the informant's name.
The CAA's primary argument against the release of the name is that it would dissuade legitimate complainants from informing the authority of future breaches by pilots.
The authority's lawyer, Duncan Ferrier, told the Tribunal it would undermine the ability to police actual breaches if informants thought they could be identified.
"The Tribunal can be clear that defamation proceedings will be one of the consequences the informant might face."
Ferrier said the Authority reached out to the informant to see if they had any objection to their name being released, however the email the person had used to make the complaint had been disabled.
"However, the fact that the informant's identity was never established, doesn't prove that the information was provided maliciously, nor that it was false."
The Human Rights Review Tribunal met in Wellington today to hear the pilot's case. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson
The CAA's Manager of Operational Policy, Practice and Guidance - Rob Scriven - told the Tribunal that naming informants would have a "chilling effect" on aviation safety.
He said the CAA depended on information about safety breaches from a range of sources, and if a precedent was made to reveal informants' identities it could mean fewer people would come forward in future.
"Information CAA receives is vital to analyse where risks in the system exists," he said.
"There's a high degree of trust in maintaining confidentiality of informants and is crucial in ensuring information from members of the public flows freely."
The Tribunal will meet again tomorrow to hear from more witnesses.
