110 Cathay Pacific Pilots Win $16.65 Million Wage Settlement After Seven-Year Fight

Cathay Pacific Airways is one of the world's largest international carriers, but its pilots based in California spent years arguing that their paychecks did not meet the state's wage-and-hour standards. In June 2017, a group of pilots filed suit in the Northern District of California, alleging the airline failed to pay proper overtime, denied legally required meal and rest periods, and shortchanged crews on reserve duty compensation.

The litigation stretched across seven years. During that period, 61 pilots accepted individual settlements on their own terms. The remaining 110 pilots pressed forward as a class, and Cathay Pacific offered each of them individual deals in 2023. Class counsel rejected those offers as inadequate. The eventual class-wide settlement, filed for court approval on June 21, 2024, came to approximately three times the aggregate value of what the airline had offered individually the year before.

Mastagni Holstedt, together with co-counsel ArentFox Schiff and Christensen and Jensen, represented the pilot class. The case was heard by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria. The $16.65 million settlement covered unpaid overtime wages, compensation for meal and rest period violations, and pay owed for reserve duty under California law.

The settlement fund also included more than $5.5 million in attorneys' fees, reflecting the complexity of applying California's labor code to the operations of a major international airline over a multi-year class period.

Preliminary approval was granted on August 16, 2024.