District Advocacy in Action

Working Together to Protect and Enhance Our Careers

By F/O Rick Harper (Delta) and Capt. Carlos Coto (JetBlue)

We’re all airline pilots—we just happen to work for different airlines and fly different aircraft. But we all share the same concerns about our careers. Many external forces influencing our future, including the National Mediation Board, Congress, the price of fuel, etc., aren’t issues any of us or our pilot groups can handle alone. Only by working together, across carrier lines, are we capable of effectively protecting and enhancing our careers.

As ALPA members, we’re able to act collectively through ALPA-PAC, Calls to Action, and the annual Legislative Summit, which all allow us to band together to advance a pilot-partisan agenda in Washington, D.C. In Idaho, for the first time we’ve added another option: an open, engaged District Advocacy program for all of our state’s ALPA members.

The 175 ALPA pilots who live in Idaho are invited to participate in the regular meetings we organize with our elected officials. We sent an introductory e-mail to ALPA members living in Idaho and found that one of our colleagues had prior experience on Capitol Hill, expertise we’re lucky and grateful to have on our side. To date, pilots from five ALPA pilot groups have joined us for meetings with every federal elected official in our state.

Communicating with elected officials may seem intimidating, but they can’t do their job without hearing from their constituents—us. In fact, regular contact with these officials and their staff members brings about pilot-partisan progress in our country by developing collaborative relationships with decision-makers. For example, during discussions about the FAA reauthorization bill, a large delegation of us met with Sens. James Risch (R-Idaho) and Michael Crapo (R-Idaho) to educate them about ALPA’s safety concerns. These meetings were productive, providing our officials with information they needed to make the right, pro-pilot decisions in Washington, D.C.

This model of district advocacy is working for us in Idaho, and we believe it could easily be replicated in other states. We’re most powerful when we stand together, across company lines, and present a unified pilot front. The District Advocacy program needs every ALPA member to get involved locally in order to make an impact nationally.

From left: Capt. Carlos Coto (JetBlue), Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), and F/O Rick Harper (Delta). Harper and Coto live in the first and second congressional districts of Idaho, respectively. Both attended ALPA’s Legislative Summit last June, where they met with each of Idaho’s four congressional offices and discussed the unfair subsidies that Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar are receiving from their governments; Ex-Im Bank reform; the need for secondary cockpit barriers; and the safe air transport of lithium batteries.

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of Air Line Pilot.

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