Government finally doles out $106 million settlement to air marshals

Washington (CNN) -- The game of identifying federal air marshals on airplanes may just have gotten a little easier. Look for the smiling person with a fatter wallet or purse.

The government this week deposited $106 million in a fund to compensate air marshals for unpaid overtime, the end result of a lawsuit filed more than five years ago.

On average, each of the more than 3,000 air marshals covered by the lawsuit will get $26,000 after legal fees are deducted. But individual amounts will vary widely because of their lengths of service, salaries and other factors. Some air marshals will get two or three times that amount, and some much less, a participant in the suit said.

A lawyer representing the air marshals notified them this week the trustee in the case will send out individual checks in about three weeks.

The payout is a "great, great outcome," said Stephen G. Seliger, a Chicago attorney who represented the air marshals. It will bring to an end the 2006 lawsuit, he said, although another lawsuit has been filed on behalf of about 450 air marshals who were not part of the original suit.

"I'm satisfied and I'm happy," said one of the 11 original plaintiffs in the case, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak.

"In my case, I was working 16- to 20-hour days and was only being compensated for eight hours," he said. He was furious because senior level officials were making "extraordinarily large salaries and bonuses" while denying rank-and-file air marshals overtime, he added..

The federal government argued the air marshals were exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, and therefore were not entitled to overtime pay. It also argued air marshals' "availability pay," a 25 percent bump in pay for being available 24 hours a day, compensated them for the extra hours they work.

But a federal judge ruled that air marshals are not exempt from the labor law, and the availability pay was not intended as overtime pay. Air marshals were entitled to overtime after working 43-hour weeks, the judge said.

The judge's opinion, and the change of leadership at the agency, led to the settlement, the air marshal litigant said.

He said he gives credit to Air Marshal Service Director Robert Bray and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano because "they truly understand what we do."

"I think this closes a chapter in the mismanagement of the Federal Air Marshal Service in the past. And although it isn't perfect now, it's a hell of a lot better then it was six or seven years ago," he said.

Losing a $5000 seat to a Federal Air Marshal

Air Marshals are generally one of the quieter branches of the TSA. According to Wikipedia , their number is estimated to be in the thousands.

They generally fly undercover, however, and there’s no way to accurately judge the number actually on flights. While they carry guns, the Air Marshal’s job is to blend in with other passengers, unless an inflight incident actually occurs.

Last week, however, a client of mine ran into a situation where he ended up unhappy with his flight and the Air Marshal’s cover was blown anyway. Here’s the story: This was a very quick, three day, two-city trip to Europe, and as such, we had worked hard to find flights with comfortable business class seating so he could arrive and return in good shape to work the next day on each end.

On the way back, that meant deliberately choosing an upper deck aisle seat on a 747, where he can usually sleep because it is quiet. But when my client got to Frankfurt, he was given a boarding pass for a middle seat on the lower deck.

“I told the gate agent there was some mistake, but she replied “I didn’t change your seat.” Not a helpful response. I then clarified that I had an upper deck aisle seat booked, and could she tell me why that changed. She talked to her supervisor, and then came back and said, “This is the seat we have for you.”

I then pulled out my printed confirmation, which indeed showed my upper deck aisle seat confirmed on my itinerary. At that point, she finally tried to find out why I was in a new seat, and reported that a Federal Air Marshal had taken my original seat, and I had been reassigned.”

The client is a pretty reasonable person, albeit exhausted at that point, and as he said he “understood that an Air Marshal can do what they want.”

On the other hand his company had spent over $10,000 on his full-fare business class ticket, and he is a Global Services member, which means over $50,000 of business class tickets on United a year. .

So he asked if they could move him to another seat. (Only 6 out of the 52 business class seats on a 747 are middle seats, and there are 20 upper deck seats.)

No go. The agent’s curt response “everyone else already has their seat.” And said there was nothing she could do. He didn’t even get an apology, or any kind of a customer service voucher.

(For those who don’t fly regularly, United Airlines often hands out a little card when they have a small problem with a valued client — a missed connection, a seating problem, a shortage of food in business class, etc. The cards have a code that entitle the recipient to their choice of something like a travel discount or bonus miles. One client got such a card just because there was no champagne on a flight to Europe.

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