RidgeAir owes thousands in holiday pay arrears after 15 years without leave records
A Marlborough aviation firm unjustifiably dismissed its only pilot, Employment Relations Authority member Alyn Higgins ruled on 15 September 2026.
The chief pilot had flown for RidgeAir Limited for 15 years, since 2010, as the small operator’s only employee, when the business started running into trouble in 2024. RidgeAir opened talks about a redundancy payout and a possible interim contract while it wound down, but two meetings came and went without an agreement, with figures ranging between $30,000 and $45,000 on the table.
By April 2025, his work phone had stopped working overnight, and the next morning he arrived to find his laptop gone from his desk, replaced by a handwritten note calling him to a meeting to discuss unspecified concerns. At that meeting, he was told the company wasn’t financially viable and might not even cover his last fortnight’s pay. A company representative told him plainly, “we can’t employ you from today, immediately.” He was also asked about work he had done for a rival operator, Air Kaikoura, even though nothing in his contract stopped him taking on other jobs. He told the men in the room the matter wasn’t finished, that they would hear from his lawyers, and then left.
RidgeAir later said he had effectively resigned by walking out. Higgins disagreed. Taking his phone and laptop away without warning, then giving him no real chance to respond to its concerns, showed RidgeAir hadn’t acted the way a fair, reasonable employer would have, the Authority found. It ruled the dismissal unjustified, and turned down his separate bid for redundancy pay, noting the business was still flying and had, in fact, asked him to keep working under some kind of arrangement.
He walked away with $21,317.40 in lost wages, after four unsuccessful job applications, plus $15,000 for the humiliation and distress it caused him. The Authority didn’t dock any of that for his own conduct, finding RidgeAir couldn’t back up its claims of a conflict of interest over his work for the rival operator.
Separately, it turned out RidgeAir had never kept holiday and leave records in the pilot’s entire 15 years there, even though that responsibility sits with the employer, not the worker. With no records to go by, Higgins accepted the pilot’s own account and awarded him 16 weeks’ unpaid annual holiday pay, worth $26,236.80, on top of $3,541.96 in wage arrears. Penalties totalling $1,500 followed for the wage and record-keeping breaches, split between the pilot and the Crown.
Higgins also found the director had been “knowingly concerned in the breaches,” given how closely he was involved in running the business day to day, but couldn’t personally fine him, since only a Labour Inspector can bring that kind of claim, and the pilot hadn’t sought leave to chase him for the money directly. All up, RidgeAir owes the pilot just over $67,000 within 28 days, plus a separate $500 penalty to the Crown, with costs still to be settled.
