Sacked Air NZ captain's challenge fails to take off

Grant Craigie

A sacked Air New Zealand captain with assault and aviation convictions has failed in his bid to get his job back.

Last year, Grant Alexander Craigie challenged an Employment Relation Authority's ruling that the airline was entitled to dismiss the Boeing 737 captain after an investigation prompted by its discovery of assault and aviation convictions against him.

However, this week the Employment Court in Auckland dismissed Mr Craigie's challenge.

"His dismissal was justified. [His] cross-challenge to the authority's determination is also dismissed," Judge C. M. Shaw said.

Mr Craigie, 46, who had flown with the airline for 16 years before losing his job in September 2004, accused managers of using incidents in his private life unreasonably to get rid of him.

This was despite the fact that the Civil Aviation Authority had, after suspending him from flying for two months in 2003, cleared him as "a fit and proper person" to hold a pilot's licence.

The airline had said at an employment hearing that cases in 1996 and 2001 of assaults on men his estranged wife had been seeing, and unrelated wilful breaches of aviation regulations, cast doubt on Mr Craigie's ability to make sound judgments consistently under pressure.

It also accused him of not being "open and honest" about convictions for the second assault and for three off-duty flights in his private aircraft without an airworthiness certificate.

The pilot escaped conviction on five charges in the 1996 case, including those of assaulting a male and a female and of possessing a weapon, after admitting these in a plea-bargain.

- NZPA