Fort Worth, Texas - We cannot see why Ms. Robichaux has filed a whistleblower complaint. With Flight 63, the manager on duty became involved immediately upon becoming aware of the situation. What Ms. Robichaux perceived as interference was, in fact, the manager doing his job - to manage the security event - so she could continue to do her job, which was to communicate with the aircraft.
We have procedures in place such that each person involved in responding to a security event has specific duties and, working together as a team, all of them can contribute to the safety of our passengers and crew. The dispatcher’s job is to work with the flight to relay information to the Captain and receive information from the Captain before, during and after flight. Our dispatchers are not trained to manage security events, but instead to continue communicating with the pilots. Our SOC managers are responsible for managing all security issues and events, are trained to do so and deal with security issues and with law enforcement on a regular basis.

At no time did we take disciplinary actions against Ms. Robichaux. We did hold a counseling session with Ms. Robichaux on May 27, but the purpose of counseling is to avoid a situation where corrective/disciplinary action might be taken. This was brought about by her deviation from security procedures that we had re-enforced to all of the dispatchers on May 6. Counseling would have been held for any dispatcher who deviated from this policy.

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