A flight attendant who was unjustly fired while pregnant has been awarded €24,000 in compensation by an industrial tribunal.

The tribunal found that Intimate Carre Aviation Ltd had violated the “last in, first out” principle in sacking Ms Stock instead of a more junior colleague back in March 2011. She was six months’ pregnant at the time.

Employers cannot sack pregnant workers unless in cases of redundancy, when an employee is dismissed due to their position becoming superfluous to requirements.

Intimate Carre Aviation Ltd CEO Mark Lille said that Ms Stock had been sacked after the company sold the plane she worked on. All staff members working on that particular aircraft save for a pilot had been made redundant, Mr Lille said.

Ms Stock’s pregnancy had no bearing on the redundancy decision, which came five months after she had informed the company of her pregnancy, he argued. But the tribunal found that the company had employed a new flight attendant to work on a different aircraft some time before making Ms Stock redundant.

There was nothing in Ms Stock’s contract to indicate she could only work on the one particular aircraft.

Tribunal chairman Franco Masini agreed with Ms Stock’s statement that “I was not employed by the aircraft – I was employed by the company,” and found that the company could not justify sacking her on redundancy grounds while keeping a less senior flight attendant on its books.

Ms Stock will now receive a monthly €4,000 cheque for the next six months by way of compensation for having been unfairly sacked from her workplace.

Although industrial tribunal regulations require cases to be concluded within a one-month timeframe, this particular case stretched to six sittings over 20 months.

This, the tribunal said, was due to both parties taking considerable time to try and negotiate an out-of-court settlement.

Lawyer Anġlu Farrugia appeared on behalf of Ms Stock, while Katia Mercieca was legal counsel to the defence.