Female Royal Navy pilot who failed training sues the MoD for sex discrimination because ‘gatekeeping’ male instructor was ‘bad at his job’

A female Royal Navy pilot who failed training has sued the Ministry of Defence for sex discrimination after failing her exam and blaming it on a ‘gatekeeping’ male instructor. 

Royal Navy pilot hopeful Hannah McCann told an employment tribunal, held in Bristol, that her military career was left in tatters because she could not get her wings.

Ms McCann was not able to continue her naval flying career because she failed her Final Aptitude Test, and as such was left ‘devastated’. 

She blamed this inability on her instructor, claiming he failed to provide her with a proper education and left her with a ‘knowledge gap’ on the test. 

Ms McCann compared her trainer to a ‘driving instructor failing to instruct a learner on the use of indicators’. 

She claimed the trainer’s actions amounted to sex discrimination and sex harassment.

However her case has been thrown out before a full tribunal could begin, after it was found the MoD could not be held ‘vicariously liable’ for the trainer’s alleged actions. 

This was because the instructor in question was a contractor, and not employed directly by the Navy, the employment tribunal found.

Ms McCann was training to be a pilot at the Royal Naval Air Station (RNAS) in Yeavilton, Somerset, the tribunal was told.  

Meanwhile, the MoD had given Babcock International Group a contract to provide them training.  

Ms McCann was given an initial stage of flight training by an employee of this company between February and May 2023.

The trainer, who was named only as ‘Mr Pearson’, instructed the budding pilot on flying light aircraft ‘to standards set by the [MoD]’. 

And on May 4, 2023, she failed Final Aptitude Test, which was conducted by her Royal Navy commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Clinton.

As a result she was unable to pass on to the next stage of pilot training, and she left service with the Royal Navy. 

It was the MoD’s responsibility to select, grade or withdraw trainee pilots, not Babcock’s.

The MoD applied for the complaints against Mr Pearson to be struck out because ‘it could not be held vicariously liable for any alleged discriminatory acts of Mr Pearson’.

An MoD employee argued that reports he filed on Miss McCann’s performance in which she seemed to pass were filled out in a way which was ‘exactly what would be expected of an instructor’.

Miss McCann told the tribunal that Mr Pearson ‘exercised a “gatekeeping” function in the decision as to whether or not she would pass her training’.

‘Were it not for his acts of direct discrimination and harassment, she would still be serving in the Royal Navy, but his ‘gatekeeping’ role prevented her from doing so,’ the tribunal heard.

‘The consequences of Mr Pearson’s actions were devastating for [Miss McCann], both in terms of her planned military career and her emotional wellbeing.’

The MoD’s case was successful, and Miss McCann’s claims were struck out by the tribunal.

However, Employment Judge Colm Henry O’Rourke noted that Ms McCann was correct about being in a ‘legal vacuum’ where the MoD could ‘more properly, evade’ discrimination by replacing service instructors with contractors’.’