Would You Refuse?

The day before Jetsgo shut down, thirteen Jetsgo pilots received memos telling them to ferry airplanes to Quebec City for so-called urgent maintenance. Airline founder Michel Leblanc had supervisors issue the fake AD notices, in order to gather the fleet in Quebec City before the public announcement. Leblanc said the ruse was necessary to ensure compliance with the order, and that half the pilots would have refused, had they known the true purpose of the ferry flights was to turn Jetsgo into Jetsgone.

M. Leblanc has extensive experience with defunct airlines, so I imagine his "half of them would have refused" statement is based on experimental evidence, not conjecture. I know it happens. I've even heard of a pilot flying an employer's airplane to an undisclosed airport and hiding it there, pending receipt of wages owed.

Had I been working for Jetsgo, with a $30,000 debt to pay off, and been told to ferry the airplane because the company was shutting down, I might have become so angry that I would be legally obliged to refuse the flight, for the sake of aviation safety. But if my emotions were under control, I'd probably be in the half of pilots that would do the flight. I'd hope my co-workers who refused would understand that I wasn't licking the boots of the management that had kicked us. It's just that knowing it might be a long time before I flew a jet again, I'd want to squeeze the last drop of flying out of the defunct job.