Fired KLM worker deemed negligent in fuel spill incident loses severance pay lawsuit
A KLM employee who was fired after he allowed about 1,000 liters of kerosene to leak while refueling an aircraft will not get the around €85,000 in compensation he claimed from his former employer. The man’s negligence seriously endangered the safety of his colleagues and passengers, the Noord-Holland district court said in a ruling published this week. KLM was right to dismiss him, and he is not entitled to severance pay or compensation.
The 52-year-old man joined KLM Ground Crew as a permanent employee in May 2024. There, he was responsible for refueling aircraft, a position he had already performed for several years as a temporary worker. This job entails strict rules, including “active supervision” - employees must keep their eyes on the refueling process. That means they are not allowed to go sit in the tanker, because they would then be unable to see the refueling.
On June 14 last year, the man started the refueling process and then went to sit inside the vehicle. He therefore failed to notice that kerosene was leaking onto the ground via the plane’s wing. An observant colleague alerted him to the fact, but by that time, the fuel had already leaked for around 90 seconds. An estimated 1,000 liters of kerosene were lost.
“It was flowing like a waterfall. The fuel truck driver didn’t notice this and was sitting in his vehicle looking at his iPad,” the colleague said about the incident. “Fortunately, the passengers had not yet boarded. There was a high risk of fire.”
Emergency services, including multiple fire engines and ambulances, responded to the scene to secure the situation and clean up the fuel spill. The plane eventually departed with a delay of 1.5 hours.
KLM suspended the employee with pay and launched an investigation into the incident. The man gave conflicting statements, first claiming that he wasn’t in the tanker at all and then giving varying reasons for why he got into the vehicle without pausing the refueling process. KLM also found that the man had had several earlier warnings about following the rules more carefully. So the airline dismissed him. The man did not agree with the severance package KLM offered, so the matter ended up in court.
KLM argued that the employee failed to comply with the safety regulations and thereby caused an “extremely dangerous situation” for himself, colleagues, and other people present. There was a high risk “of fire or an explosion, in which serious personal injury could not be ruled out.”
The employee argued that he had not been responsible for that situation. According to him, it is commonplace for KLM employees to sit in their tanker trucks while refueling a plane. He said the leak was not the result of his negligence, but of a broken system that failed to automatically stop when the tanks were full. He also said that KLM allowed his suspension to drag on for too long.
The man demanded his job back or, failing that, €75,000 compensation for wrongful dismissal plus around €10,000 in transition payment and salary during the notice period.
The court ruled in KLM’s favor. According to the judge, the employee violated the regulations by sitting in his tanker truck without pausing the refueling process. The fact that he had previous warnings about this counted against him. “By taking risks completely unnecessarily, he endangered the safety of colleagues, passnegers, and other bystanders, primarily due to the risk of fire with fatal consequences,” the court said in its ruling.
KLM is allowed to dismiss the employee for this “serious negligence,” the court ruled. Instead of compensation, the man must pay €1,148 in legal fees for his former employer.
