RI International Airport to Take Legal Action Against “Anonymous” Emailers Harming Operations
GoLocalProv News Team
RI International Airport to Take Legal Action Against “Anonymous” Emailers Harming Operations
On Tuesday, RI Airport CEO Iftikhar Ahmad was joined by his senior team to address specifically the plans it intends to take, after anonymous emails to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on what they say were false claims of a walkout harmed the airport financially.
The airport has exploded in growth in recent years and is consistently rated as one of the best airports in the United States and the world.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“We’ve had tremendous success here over eight years,” said Ahmad. “There are things that we need to work on…and the toxicity that has been created by some union officials and some disgruntled employees. There’s been some settling scores taking place. We usually don’t respond to anonymous letters from 'proton mail.' Now, we have to take some action.”
“Why are we going to take action now? It’s one thing to say something negative about me which is not a problem. When you have a job like that, you’re going to be discussed around the coolers and outside and that’s OK,” said Ahmad. “But when you start impacting the operations of RI Airport Corporation by impacting its relationships with the airlines, by impacting [our] relationship with the FAA — by disseminating baseless information about RIAC’s operations to decrease the faith in the safety of our facilities and be disruptive...the court system allows you take some steps.”
“Walkout” Threatened, FAA Involvement, and Potential for Legal Action.
“On August 13, there was supposed to be this ‘walkout’ as you may have seen in the press — those emails went to the FAA, and they said to us, 'Are they going to do this?' We said we checked with the union, and [no],” said Ahmad. “We know maybe where it was coming from, but we told the FAA, the union gave us a letter that they’re not going to walk out."
"They said we don’t care — do you have available contingencies [to have the airport's] safety covered," said Ahmad, of the FAA's response. "And we said we have consultants, they said are they trained to take over, we said we can make sure that happens. So then we went and got contractors and trained them and paid them.”
Ahmad and his legal team said that the airport is still working to quantify the financial impact loss, including staffing and time that resulted from what they say was the false information generation from anonymous emailers.
“It needs an investigation as to who these people are so we can take the steps to protect the interest of the public agency. We have to ensure that our investigation can get some subpoenas issued and that depositions can take place so we can know who’s behind it and go to court. And use the court system like anyone can,” he said.
“When I started in 2016, the board said to me, after I was hired, ‘Hey this place is like a country club and you need to change it.’ The expectation was we need to get better. Continuous improvement cannot take place without change. And some people are not OK with that change,” said Ahmad.
“The union is demanding that we don’t have performance evaluations. They’re demanding we don’t have goals anymore,” said Ahmad. “That’s the path to DCYF. We don’t want that. We want to have a high-performing organization."
“Facts should matter. Anonymous ‘proton mail’ should not negate what we accomplished,” said Ahmad. “Not doing anything is not an option anymore. This could go further beyond this in terms of impacting operations at the airport.”
“This is not about not liking unions — we love our union employees. There are wonderful people that come every day and do a great job. There are times when they’re not and there are procedures in place for that,” said Ahmad.