NASSAU, BAHAMAS- The Court of Appeal has “dismissed in its entirety” an appeal by a past president of the Bahamas Airline Pilots Association (BAPA) who challenged his mandatory retirement at age sixty from Bahamasair.
Captain Joseph Moxey, a 35-year veteran of the national flag carrier and former head of the pilots’ union, had argued that both industrial and regulatory changes entitled him to remain employed until sixty-five. His case rested heavily on a 2018 industrial agreement between BAPA and Bahamasair and on aviation regulations introduced in 2021.
Moxey maintained that the 2018 agreement expressly provided for retirement at age sixty-five and that the Civil Aviation Regulation LIC.070(b) set sixty-five as the maximum age for pilots engaged in international commercial operations. He contended that taken together, the contract and regulatory framework superseded Bahamasair’s longstanding practice of requiring pilots to retire at sixty.
But in a unanimous ruling, Justices Crane-Scott, Charles, and Hilton dismissed the appeal, affirming the earlier judgment of Justice Deborah Fraser. The appellate panel agreed that the 2018 industrial agreement was never registered as required by the Industrial Relations Act and therefore had no binding legal effect. “The learned Judge was correct to conclude that the unregistered 2018 Agreement was legally ineffective and could not form part of the Appellant’s contract of employment,” the judgment said.
The court also dealt directly with the regulatory issue. Moxey had argued that Regulation CAR LIC.070(b) effectively raised the retirement age to sixty-five. The respondents, Bahamasair and BAPA, refuted this position, saying the regulation merely set an outer limit for eligibility to operate in certain flight categories, not a mandatory extension of employment.
The Court of Appeal sided firmly with the respondents. “I find no merit in the Appellant’s contention that Regulation CAR LIC.070(b) confers upon him an entitlement to remain employed until the age of sixty-five (65),” the judgment stated. “The Regulation, properly construed, does not create a right to continued employment, nor does it mandate a retirement age of sixty-five (65). Rather, it defines the upper operational limit for pilots performing international commercial air transport services as members of a multi-pilot crew.”
The court went further, warning against mischaracterising the scope of the regulation. “The Appellant’s argument incorrectly treats a regulatory maximum as a compulsory employment term,” it said. “The contractual retirement age of sixty (60) years, long observed by the First Respondent as a matter of custom, policy and practice, was not displaced or rendered unlawful by the regulatory scheme.”
Moxey had also attempted to hold the pilots’ union, BAPA, liable in the matter, but the Court of Appeal rejected that aspect of the claim outright. The judges found that BAPA was not a proper party to the action, noting that no claim was ever pleaded or maintained against it during the proceedings.
Throughout the appeal, the panel emphasized that Justice Fraser’s findings in the lower court had been sound both legally and factually. “None of the Appellant’s sixteen grounds of appeal have merit,” the ruling declared, adding that there was “no material error of law or fact that warrants appellate intervention.”
