Pilot Didn't Like The Way The Trustee Was Taking Care Of Business

Perhaps he was just mad as hell and didn't want to take it anymore. Whatever the reason, a Hawaiian Airlines pilot Thursday threw a trustee in the carrier's bankruptcy off his 767-300.

"The pilot told him he wasn't happy to have him on the flight," said Hawaiian spokesman Keoni Wagner. "Rather than delay the flight by discussing it at that point, he decided to take another flight."

Josh Gotbaum is not on the list of pilots' 10 most popular people. He's in charge of overseeing Hawaiian Airlines' $4.5 million bankruptcy. The airline is overdue in paying $4.5 million into the pilots' pension fund and Gotbaum has proposed eliminating the fund altogether as one way for the carrier to dig out from under all its bills.

That doesn't sit well with pilots like Craig Kobyashi.

When Gotbaum got on board Flight 12 from Honolulu to San Francisco Thursday, Kobyashi said he found out just as the trustee was getting settled in first class. The Honolulu Advertiser reports Kobyashi asked a flight attendant to bring Gotbaum to the cockpit. That's when he asked Gotbaum to leave. When Gotbaum asked if he could explain his actions, Kobyashi said he told the bankruptcy official, "That's fair." Kobyashi said he listen as Gotbaum told him "about the good things he's trying to do and that his word is good.... I told him, 'Actions speak louder than words. For now, I need to ask you to remove yourself from the flight,' which he did."

Jim Giddings, the head of the Hawaiian Airlines' pilots union, told the Advertiser, "All of our pilots are very professional, and they maintain a very high level of professional standards regardless of the circumstances. ... This is an isolated incident ... and we look forward to working through the bankruptcy issues going forward with Gotbaum for the benefit of Hawaiian Airlines."

The FAA was a bit more firm in standing behind Kobyashi's decision to throw Gotbaum off the plane.

"That's standard aviation protocol," FAA spokesman Donn Walker said. "A captain is in charge of his or her ship. It doesn't mean that the airline won't get mad at them for doing it. But it's the captain's place to decide who does or does not fly on his or her plane."

"So many employees are so emotional about him after all of the things Gotbaum has done, such as freezing our pension plan," he told local reporters in Honolulu (HI). "This was strictly a matter of safety. It's not a vendetta. It's not anything else. I didn't feel that I could function properly."

FMI: www.hawaiianair.com