Western Global Airlines (KD, Fort Myers Southwest Florida) and Flexport have agreed to address their dispute through private mediation, with a session tabled in San Francisco for December 12, according to the freight and logistics magazine The Loadstar.
The dispute dates back to July when, as previously reported, Flexport filed a lawsuit against Western Global Airlines (WGA) accusing it of failing to provide proper transportation and switched its aircraft provider to Atlas Air (5Y, New York JFK).
WGA had been contracted in January 2018 to provide a B747-400(F) for rotations between Los Angeles International and Hong Kong International from April 2018 to March 2021.
But Flexport said in a court filing that “the 747-400 suffered from numerous mechanical and other service failures.” WGA provided a replacement, an MD-11(F), which the forwarder claimed was inferior.
Eva Rijser, Flexport's vice president for global communications, told ch-aviation at the time that it ended the agreement “because of service failures - it wasn’t meeting our needs or the needs of our customers.” But Western Global Airlines CEO James K Neff told ch-aviation: “Flexport attempted to terminate its agreement with WGA in breach of its contractual obligations pure and simple in order to replace it with more favorable terms.”
Now, however, following a series of angry letters to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, the two sides have agreed a legal dispute resolution programme.
“The parties have reached agreement to mediate their dispute in San Francisco on December 12, 2019, before a private mediator,” Western Global Airlines’ lawyer said, a move that suggests the two companies are keen to put the case behind them.
