An Air-Pilot's Responsibility A case has been heard by Judge
Crawford in the Ilford County Court in which an air-pilot sued an aeroplane proprietor who had dismissed him for refusing to carry out an order to make a return flight carrying a reporter from Plymouth to London. It appeared that the ground engineer at Romford at the start of the outward flight had informed the pilot that the machine was not fit for . night-flying. The Air Navigation Act provides that after sundown aeroplanes should carry lights. The pilot had no equipment for lighting, and as the weather was foggy and there was a head wind he informed the reporter that he . could not fly till the following morning. He quite clearly could not have decided otherwise without breaking the law and perhaps endangering the lives of himself and a passenger, and it is satisfactory that his action for wrongful dismissal was successful and that the employer's counter- claim for diimages failed. The judge's Contention that an air-pilot must exercise the same discretion regarding weather conditions as the captain of a ship is unanswer- able. Aeroplanes would carry few passengers if it were otherwise. * * * *
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