Our Union: It’s About Being There
By Capt. Tim Canoll, ALPA President
As football season gets into high gear, it’s easy to remember why watching a collegiate or professional game on a phone or television just isn’t the same as sitting in the stadium.
Whenever I have the opportunity to see the Navy Midshipmen kick off, I revel in watching each play develop. If there’s an uncovered wide receiver, quarterback Will Worth will see him—and so will I from the stands. When you’re able to be near the field and hear “hut” when it’s called, you also realize how fast players really are. You just don’t get the same solidarity of cause and community from a distance.
No one understands the importance of being there like ALPA pilots. The act of being present at important points in time not only displays unity, it beckons opportunity.
While more than 10 ALPA pilot groups have signed collective bargaining agreements in the past two years, five of our union’s pilot groups remain at key junctures in their negotiations. Now in federal mediation or seeking it, the Air Wisconsin, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, and Spirit pilot groups have reached out to their managements and the public to call for a fair contract. Association members from scores of other pilot groups have been standing side by side with them on the informational picket lines.
We need even more ALPA pilots standing strong for each other. As you’ll read in this issue, we are more than halfway through 2016 and the North American passenger airline industry appears to be performing just as it did in 2015. Now is the time to resolve these contracts, and ALPA will be there to support our master executive councils (MECs).
Our union is also there helping our members flying for regional carriers to realize their career-progression goals. One of the many actions we’re taking is launching the latest series of one-day interview workshops for ALPA pilots looking for techniques for interviewing with mainline airlines. We need all ALPA pilots to be there as our union assists our regional members.
For more than 80 years, ALPA has also been present and accounted for in advancing aviation safety. While nearly 400 people and organizations expressed interest in becoming part of the FAA’s newly established Drone Advisory Committee, ALPA was among the 34 industry stakeholders selected by the FAA and invited to join. ALPA will continue to push for the safe integration of commercially operated unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the national airspace system. The Association will also continue to pursue congressional support to grant the FAA the ability to fully regulate UAS hobbyists.
While the U.S. presidential election will take center stage in the coming month, our union will also be there on Capitol Hill, engaging face-to-face with lawmakers and their staff. We’ll continue to pursue congressional support to enact urgently needed safeguards for the air transport of dangerous goods, including lithium batteries, and advance aviation security with secondary cockpit barriers and improvements to the Federal Flight Deck Officer program. We must also continue our efforts to deny Norwegian Air International, enforce our trade agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and ensure there’s a thriving profession for future airline pilots.
We’ll be there on Parliament Hill, pressing to apply flight- and duty-time limits and minimum rest requirements to all Canadian airline pilots, and working to make the Known Crewmember program available to Canadian ALPA members.
It’s essential that all ALPA members be there with us by volunteering with their MEC Legislative Affairs Committee or participating in ALPA Calls to Action.
Collegiate football season can also reveal how the simple act of being there can help others. When Florida State’s Travis Rudolph joined teammates for lunch with local middle school students, he chose to sit with a young man who was eating alone. In a Facebook post that later went viral, it turned out that the young man suffers from autism and that the wide receiver’s decision that day had made a hugely positive impact.
There’s nothing like being there.
