Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WAGE-HOUR—EXEMPTIONS—E.D. La.: ‘Tech crew’ employed by helicopter transport company exempt from overtime under FLSA, (Apr 22, 2025)

By Ronald Miller, J.D.

The crucial determination in assessing the status of a carrier is whether the carrier has held itself out to the public or to a definable segment of the public as being willing to transport for hire, indiscriminately.

An employer that provided helicopter-based transportation was granted its motion for summary judgment against the overtime claims of its “tech crew” employees, ruled a federal district court in Louisiana. The court determined that the employer met the requirements for common carrier by air status. The employer established that it solicits business from a definable segment of the general public, and there was no evidence that it ever turned anyone away in its definable segment who sought to join its consortium and was willing to pay for its services. Thus, the court was not persuaded that the employer’s business model deprived it of common carrier status and its employees were exempt from the FLSA’s overtime provisions due to the applicability of the Railway Labor Acts (Mosley v. Bristow U.S., LLC, No. 23-2674 (E.D. La. Apr. 21, 2025)).

Helicopter “tech crew.” Employees of a helicopter-based transportation company brought a collective action alleging that the employer denied them overtime compensation in violation of the FLSA. The employer provides transportation to both private and governmental entities seeking such services, including the oil and gas industry, search and rescue operations, and medical evaluations, among others.

According to the named plaintiffs, they were “tech crew” employees for the employer and a helicopter pilot performing operations on the Louisiana coast. They alleged that they were employed primarily to perform manual labor, including hoist operations, rescue swimming, piloting helicopters, “AMT’s” (helicopter technicians), rescue missions, and training missions.

Work shifts. They alleged that they were required to work at least 12 hours per day for 14 straight days—totaling a minimum of 84 hours per week. However, they would be directed to only clock in for 11.43 hours per day, even though they worked 12 hours per day, and oftentimes longer. According to the employees, after working a minimum of 168 hours over a two-week period, 84 hours per week, they would receive a bi-weekly paycheck reflecting only 80 hours and including no overtime for the 44 plus hours of overtime worked in those weeks.

The employees alleged that they were non-exempt employees under the FLSA and were never paid an overtime rate of one and one-half times their regular rate of pay for hours worked in excess of 40 hours per week.

Dispositive motion. For its part, the employer filed a dispositive motion grounded on the contention that the employees were exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA due to the applicability of Title II of the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The FLSA provides for an exemption with respect to any employee of “a carrier by air” subject to the provisions of the RLA. The RLA extends to and covers “every common carrier by air engaged in interstate or foreign commerce... and every air pilot or other person who performs any work as an employee or subordinate official of such carrier....”

While it was clear that the employer was a carrier by air, the dispute was whether it was a common carrier, a term that the RLA does not define.

RLA exemption. Given that Congress has not defined “common carrier” for purposes of the RLA exemption, the appropriate legal standard derives from Woolsey v. National Transportation Safety Board, 993 F.2d 516 (5th Cir. 1993). That decision explains that the crucial determination in assessing the status of a carrier is whether the carrier has held itself out to the public or to a definable segment of the public as being willing to transport for hire, indiscriminately.

Affirmative defense. An FLSA exemption constitutes an affirmative defense by the employer so the burden of proving whether the RLA exemption applies, which includes proof of common carrier status and interstate commerce, falls solely upon the employer. To prevail on its affirmative defense, the employer must prove “beyond peradventure” that the undisputed facts confirm that it is a common carrier by air.

The question then is whether the employer has satisfied its burden of proving that it has held itself out to a definable segment of the public as being willing to transport for hire, indiscriminately.

The employer operates two business divisions. An oil and gas division which provides passenger transportation to and from oil and gas facilities, and a search and rescue and medical evacuation division, SAR/Medevac, which provides search and rescue and medical evacuations from oil and gas facilities. The employees in this action all work in the SAR/Medevac division. As of January 2023, in order to use the employer’s SAR/Medevac flights, customers must join its SAR/Medevac consortium in order to receive “transport for hire” from the employer.

According to the employees, the consortium business model for the SAR/Medevac division was inconsistent with transporting for hire indiscriminately, and therefore the RLA exemption did not apply.

Here, the court noted that the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Thibodeaux v. Executive Jet International, Inc., 328 F.3d 742 (5th Cir. 2003), applied the Woolsey test in the context of a flight crew member who claimed that he should have been paid overtime because the RLA exemption did not apply to his employer, whom the plaintiff contended was not a common carrier.

In the present case, the court was persuaded that the reasoning employed in both Woolsey and Thibodeaux make clear that under the undisputed facts of this case the employer met the requirements for common carrier by air status. Accordingly, the employer was exempt from the FLSA’s overtime provisions, and the employee’s claims for unpaid overtime were barred as a matter of law.

The case is No. 23-2674.

Judge: Zainey, J.

Attorneys: Charles J. Stiegler (Stiegler Law Firm) for Benjamin Mosley. Andrew Joseph Baer (Jackson Lewis) for Bristow U.S., L.L.C.

Companies: Bristow U.S., L.L.C.; Bristow Holdings U.S., Inc.

Cases: WageHour Exemptions Overtime ClassActions LouisianaNews