18 September 2011, Sunday / YASİN BABACAN , HELSINKI
Atlasjet’s Ersoy showed multiple documents at the court to show that Air Finland’s account of what happened between the two erstwhile partners were “baseless.” Atlasjet, a private Turkish airline, built an evidence-based case against Air Finland as the representatives of both companies confronted each other at a Finnish high court last week.
Atlasjet’s appeal of a decision made by a local Finnish court that ruled it must pay 2.5 million euros in compensation to Air Finland over a contract dispute four years ago ended on Friday in the Nordic country’s Court of Arbitration in Helsinki after the attorneys of both sides delivered their closing statements.
According to the contract, which Atlasjet says it had no option but to cancel a few months after signing it, the Turkish airline would carry passengers from various locations in Europe to Turkey with rented planes and crew from Air Finland. However, due to many technical problems with Air Finland’s planes, Atlasjet claimed that significant delays had tarnished the Turkish company’s image and caused it substantial financial losses.
Atlasjet Chairman Murat Ersoy answered claims made by Air Finland by showing multiple documents, underlining that the Finnish company’s account of what happened between the two erstwhile partners were “baseless” and “aimed at misleading the court.”
“Every single event in the aviation sector is recorded,” Ersoy said on Thursday. “I will show you all the evidence with the real reasons for the massive delays caused by Air Finland’s planes and that we were the party that really suffered.”
Pointing to some documents in his hand, Ersoy said: “Air Finland’s pilots drank too much alcohol when they were in Turkey. They severely injured themselves when they fell from some cliffs in Antalya. Air Finland cancelled the flight since they had no other pilot to replace the injured ones just a few hours before the flight’s departure from Antalya to Vienna. Air Finland’s pilots would have been able to fly that plane had they not fallen. I cannot even imagine what the outcome would have been if they hadn’t been injured and had taken their seat in the cockpit,” Ersoy stated. “Here I present to you three documents. The first is from a police station since the injuries were reported to the police in Antalya. The second is a document from a hospital which shows the pilots registered a 2.66 promille blood alcohol level, and the last is a letter from the management of the Dedeman Hotel [where the pilots were staying] stating that Air Finland’s pilots had disturbed hotel customers after drinking too much and that the customers had asked the hotel to tell the pilots to leave,” he added.
Moreover, the Atlasjet chairman also said the contract stipulated that the counterparty, Air Finland, had to provide “enough” crew for a flight schedule of 350 hours, meaning that there should have been a minimum of five sets of crew, so that some could rest while others were flying. “However, it [Air Finland] provided just four sets of crew to us. There is not a single aviation company that pledges to conduct 350 hours of flying in a month with only four sets of crew. Also, Air Finland asked us to reschedule some flights due to the rest periods of the crew. This clearly shows that four sets of crew were not enough to maintain the flight schedule, causing many delays,” Ersoy said, adding, “Air Finland said it was not aware of this problem, but here are the documents to show its operation center was informed about the fact that one of the reasons for the many delays was caused by having fewer crew.”
Touching on the 25-hour delay in the Spanish city of Barcelona, Ersoy said the problem was caused by the pilots’ failure to start the plane’s Air Power Unit (APU). Ersoy stated that the pilots could not start the APU four times, and called for support from Spanish airport officials afterwards. “Here I have a document from Technic Iberia showing there was no problem with the APU. It was Air Finland’s fault. The pilots followed the wrong procedure to start the APU a total of four times, causing a delay of 25 hours and forcing us to pay out 180,000 euros in compensation to the passengers.”
“These and all the other delays have decreased the dispatch reliability of Air Finland’s Boeing 757 to 54 percent, while a recent Boeing report shows the worldwide average of reliability of their 757s is 98 percent. In fact, a previous Boeing report in 2007 showed that the world average dispatch reliability fell one percentage point to 97 percent. I cannot ask myself if that average was caused by Air Finland’s extremely low figure of 54 percent in that year,” Ersoy told the court, adding that this issue should be carefully investigated by the Finnish civil aviation authority.
Also speaking at the court, Atlasjet CEO Orhan Coşkun said Air Finland CEO Mika Helenius had given him his business card, telling Coşkun that he could reach him on his cell phone whenever a problem arose with the Finnish company he manages. “I wish he were also sitting here so I could say everything while looking him straight in the eye. Every time I called him Helenius said he would do what is necessary about the delays but never did as he promised. He even stopped answering my calls after the incident in Barcelona,” Coşkun added. Helenius immediately left the courtroom after Coşkun was called as a witness and came back after Coşkun finished his defense. The Air Finland CEO and his attorney declined to comment on the issue.
Two officials from the Turkish Embassy in the Finnish capital carefully followed the hearings that started on Tuesday.
On Friday, only the attorneys of both parties attended the hearing; however, Ali Çivi, Atlasjet’s attorney, told Today’s Zaman that an “interesting” incident happened following the court session.
“Air Finland’s attorney sent an email to the panel of judges on Thursday night with new evidence about Atlasjet. This evidence was accepted by the court on Friday morning, which is unwonted, and Ersoy was called to the court immediately. Ersoy testified presenting some evidence and asked the court to accept his documents as it had Air Finland’s, documents that were related to Air Finland’s claims. The court only accepted the schedule plan of Atlasjet’s Antalya-Vienna flight following a five minute recess,” Çivi said.