GLO aircraft at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. |

A bankruptcy judge has held the chief executive officer of defunct regional airline FlyGLO LLC in contempt, finding that the executive, a son of a prominent Louisiana-based trial lawyer involved in the BP oil spill litigation, hampered an aircraft company's efforts to reclaim planes that it had leased to the airline.

The ruling by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jerry Brown in New Orleans, issued April 12, held FlyGLO CEO Calvin “Trey” Fayard III personally in contempt and ordered him to pay sanctions just shy of $106,000. The judge found that Fayard had made it difficult for Alandia Ab, an aircraft leasing company based in Finland that was FlyGLO's largest unsecured creditor in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, to recover three Saab 340 airplanes that FlyGLO rented for its regional airline.

“Fayard engaged in a course of conduct that made it difficult for Alandia to obtain the paperwork and information it needed so that it could collect its planes and begin doing what needed to be done so that Alandia could find another lessor for its planes,” Brown wrote in his contempt ruling.

Fayard, lawyer himself, is the son of Calvin Fayard Jr., a trial lawyer involved in the BP oil spill lawsuits and a well-known Democratic political fundraiser in Louisiana. Fayard Jr. and his firm, Fayard & Honeycutt, were reportedly awarded legal fees of more than $36 million in connection with the oil spill litigation.

The younger Fayard started FlyGLO, which operated as GLO Airlines, in 2015 as a company offering regional flights between New Orleans and several cities in the U.S. Gulf Coast region: Shreveport, Louisiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Fort Walton Beach, Florida; and Little Rock, Arkansas. FlyGLO didn't own its airplanes; instead, it leased them from Alandia, and the airline had an arrangement in which a separate company, Corporate Flight Management LLC (CFM), provided the crew and maintenance for the planes.

In April 2017, the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in New Orleans federal bankruptcy court. After the initial bankruptcy filing, FlyGLO and CFM became embroiled in a contractual dispute that kept the airline from staffing its flights. The airline then shut down entirely in June and the bankruptcy, which listed Alandia as an unsecured creditor owed $1.2 million, was converted to a Chapter 7 proceeding in September.

As its bankruptcy case got going, FlyGLO reached a court-approved consent agreement with Alandia that required FlyGLO to meet certain obligations with respect to paperwork and maintenance for the planes it had leased. In June, after it became clear that FlyGLO would no longer be able to staff its flights, Fayard contacted Alandia's CEO and laid out a time frame for returning the leased airplanes.

Ultimately, the planes were returned more than a month after Fayard had promised and Alandia alleged in a motion for contempt that Fayard and FlyGLO had fallen short on the consent agreement. Alandia alleged that FlyGLO didn't meet its obligations to keep the planes' paperwork current and ensure that they were properly maintained. Alandia also alleged that FlyGLO failed to make the planes available for Alandia to recover in a timely manner.

In his April 12 decision, Brown ruled that Fayard had personal liability for causing Alandia to wait more than a month to recover its airplanes after the leases expired. The bankruptcy judge awarded $105,863.25, an amount that, according to Brown's ruling, would cover the rental income that Alandia lost due to delays in the airplanes' return.

A lawyer representing Fayard, William Steffes of the Baton Rouge-based Steffes, Vingiello, McKenzie, declined to comment on Tuesday, citing the ongoing nature of the case. A lawyer representing Alandia's interests in the bankruptcy court, David Waguespack of Carver, Darden, Koretzky, Tessier, Finn, Blossman & Areaux, also declined to comment.