Spanish airline convicted in France for exceeding legal working hours

The Spanish airline Volotea was convicted on Tuesday in Nantes, in northwestern France, for several cases of exceeding the legal working hours, for which it must pay a fine of €247,500.

The Nantes police court in France imposed the penalty on the Spanish airline, while also fining the company’s human resources director a further €66,000, as reported by Elinformacion.

Judges rejected Volotea’s arguments that it was unaware that French regulations were different from European regulations, which allow longer working hours for pilots and flight crew.

The ruling states that the airline should have informed itself of the specificities of French legislation when it set up in France.

The infringements were revealed by the labour inspectorate between April and September 2018.

Volotea, which is the fifth largest airline in France in terms of volume of activity, was condemned last September by the Court of Bordeaux for having used pilots it had hired in Spain with lower labour costs, as posted workers in France.

According to its plans, France should represent 50 per cent of the Spanish low-cost airline’s activity this year, with an offer of more than five million seats, which is 54 per cent more than in 2019, the year before the covid crisis.

The airline has more than 600 employees in France and operates from seven bases: Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nice and Marseille, to which Lille was added on April, 1.

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