Common Contract Terms
 

Some airlines require new employees to sign a Training Contract. A contract is an agreement between two parties, and it usually contains many boilerplate terms. This thread is about some clauses found in most contracts that describe how one party may fail to perform, but still not be liable, or in the case of hardship, cause a renegotiation of the contract.

Force majeure essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the control of the parties, such as war, strike, riot, crime, act of nature (e.g., flooding, earthquake, volcano), prevents one or both parties from fulfilling their obligations under the contract.

Hardship clause is intended to cover cases in which unforeseen events occur that fundamentally alter the equilibrium of a contract resulting in an excessive burden being placed on one of the parties involved. Parties must perform their contractual obligations even if events have caused performance to be more onerous than would reasonably have been anticipated at the time of the conclusion of the contract. However, where continued performance has become excessively burdensome due to an event beyond a party’s reasonable control which it could not reasonably have been expected to have taken into account, the clause can obligate the parties to negotiate alternative contractual terms which reasonably allow for the consequences of the event.

Impossibility is usually a defense in that the law cannot compel an individual to perform an impossible action, nor can it punish an individual for failure to perform an impossibility. An example might be the paying of taxes. An insolvent or indigent person with no valuable assets cannot be forced to pay back taxes he or she may owe, and cannot be punished for such failure.

An escape clause is any clause, term or condition in a contract that allows a party to that contract to avoid having to perform the contract.

In the airline contracts I have seen, Force Majeure would only get the COMPANY out of the contract, never the pilot.

Also airlines have gotten more creative in the application of force majeure...it used to obviously apply only to things like hurricanes, earthquakes, war, etc. Now some companies consider any business circumstance that doesn't go their way to be force majeure, thereby freeing them from their obligations to labor.

Too many pilots up and quit? Force Majeure! Cancel the contractual work rules and vacations for the remaining pilots!

Is it within your rights to edit the contract before you (and the other party) sign it? Lots of contracts allow this, but many people are not aware of it. If you do it correctly, you can really help yourself out.

Any party to a contract can change the terms. Once changed, no matter how small, there is now a counteroffer (essentially a new contract) and the other party does not have to accept it. There is a contract only if there is an offer, acceptance and consideration. Without these three elements, there is no contract, no enforceability, no nothing.

Funny you mention this...there are anecdotal stories of pilots who have taken proffered training contracts, retyped them with slight language modifications, signed them, and turned them in.

Technically this is a little shady, but at some companies low-level employees might not catch the change...if they accept the signed contract you hand them and proceed to employ and train you, they are bound by what you gave them. The fact that they didn't read it is their problem...and if they miss it at that time, odds are they would never notice until they tried to enforce the contract (which might never happen).

Of course if they DO read it when you turn it in, I'm sure they would simply decline to employ you.

The ideal situation is where you negotaite up front with an employer to define a mutually agreeable contract...this can be done in corporate aviation and possibly some foriegn airlines, but not at US airlines.