A WOMAN pilot has begun a landmark sexual discrimination suit against Cyprus Airways (CY), claiming thousands of pounds in potential lost earnings, reports yesterday said.
Although the claim was filed in April 2001, it has only now reached the courts and is believe to be the first major case of sexual discrimination against a semi-government company.
The woman is claiming that she was not hired as a pilot by the airline during a recruitment drive in 1995 simply because she was a woman. She is claiming at least £180,000 in lost earnings, the reports said.
They said that the woman received pilot training in the UK and was successful in securing her qualifications to fly the AirbusA320, the staple aircraft of the national carrier.
She applied to CY in 1995, when the company advertised 12 pilot vacancies and was placed 13th. However, the claim says that when one of the pilots recruited was later sacked for not being up to scratch, she was not called back to replace him and the number of new recruits remained at 11.
The reports said that, according to court papers CY denies that any discrimination took place and that the airline had merely re-evaluated its pilot needs and decided not to fill the 12th vacancy.
When the hearing began last week, two members of the pilots’ union PASIPY testified that far from needing only 11 pilots during that particular period, the airline needed to employ an extra 14 or 16 but did not.
Sources in PASIPY told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the woman was qualified and had taken an extra course in flying the BAC 111, an aircraft CY no longer uses but was using at the time.
The sources confirmed that initially 12 pilots were to be recruited and that when the 12th was fired, the company did not replace him. “No one else was hired,” he said. “The company said its needs were up to 11 pilots and it is up to them to decide.”
He said the woman had applied twice since over the past 10 years but had failed to be recruited. The woman’s husband, also a pilot, and her two sons work for the CY group, two with the national carrier and the other with charter subsidiary Eurocypria.
A CY spokesman yesterday refused to comment on the case as it was in court but he did point out that the airline employs three women pilots. CY employed its first female pilot in 1991.
