18 Sep 2024

Virgin forced to reinstate employee after wrongful sacking

From Checkpoint, 4:06 pm on 18 September 2024

An airline's been forced to reinstate a cabin crew member after a tribunal found they wrongly sacked him for breaching the airlines alcohol policy and having sex while on fatigue leave. Dylan Macnish was dismissed after two incident in 2023. He drank a glass of prosecco at a Virgin xmas party within 7 and a half hours of work flight, company policy is no alcohol within eight hours of duty.Another time he was unable to sleep after a helping a passenger who had a suspected a stroke at the airport. He activated fatigue leave; where crew are able to take extra rest hours. During the extended lay over he hooked up with someone on the dating app Grindr and had sex in his hotel room. Virgin Australia used evidence from CCTV footage of Macnish's hotel hallway, and the swipe card records for his room as evidence. Australia's Fairwork Commision, found while MacNish did breach the alcohol policy that's not an automatic reason to sack him and he had accessed fatique leave for genuine reasons, employment law expert Blair Scotland spoke to Lisa Owen.