Bruce HUDSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. WESTERN AIRLINES, INC., Defendant-Appellee

Bruce Hudson appeals a judgment in favor of defendant Western Air Lines, Inc. (“Western”) in this Title VII action for alleged religious discrimination. We have jurisdiction. We affirm.

Western was a full-service air line which operated on a 24 hour per day, seven day per week basis. Each of Western’s passenger flights was staffed by a crew of flight attendants (“attendants”). The number of attendants on a flight was set by the collective bargaining agreement between Western and the Association of Flight Attendants (“AFA”), which represented Western’s attendants.

To assure that each of its flights was staffed by a full contingent of attendants, Western established for each attendant base a monthly set of individual attendant schedules. These schedules contained either blocks of flights which identified specific flights that an attendant would fly during the month and the days upon which the flights would be flown, or “reserve” lines which identified only duty days and days off during the month.

Reserve attendants covered flights that “blockholders” dropped or could not take. Reserves were divided into two groups. One group, the “call-in reserves,” were required to call in at…