The World Through a Pilot’s Lens
By Capt. Jason Ambrosi, ALPA President
We dedicate the final edition of each year’s Air Line Pilot to photos submitted by our members. This issue and your photos serve as a celebration of two important truths: pilots have a unique perspective on aviation and the world, and we all have skills that we bring to the table to enrich our union.
From early-morning walk-arounds to backside-of-the-clock flights, the images ALPA members submitted for this issue reveal the many ways we experience aviation that no one else does—not our passengers, not regulators and lawmakers, not manufacturers, and certainly not airline managements.
Because we’re hands on, touching the metal and flying the aircraft, we have an unmatched understanding of airline operations. We know our aircraft inside and out, we know what works and what doesn’t, and we bring this experience to everything that we do. When it comes to aviation safety and security and airline operations, no one has more firsthand experience than pilots.
Having this understanding is one thing, but using it to make aviation safer and to enhance our members’ careers requires pilots speaking with one unified voice through our union.
Pilots have a unique perspective on safety. As Airbus and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency advance plans to reduce the number of pilots on the flight deck, we must use our experience gained through flying thousands of hours, correcting aircraft faults, and saving lives through our professionalism, skills, and training to keep airline safety paramount. To do so, we’re building a coalition to oppose the significant threat that single-pilot and reduced-crew operations pose to our industry. But at the end of the day, it’s up to pilots to be the stalwart advocates for safety.
This edition of Air Line Pilot also sheds light on the fact that all 78,000-plus ALPA members have skills beyond being the best aviators in the world. Some of us—as demonstrated in this issue—are talented photographers. Some are engineers or safety experts who contribute their knowledge to helping make the industry safer and, as a result, saving lives. Some are pilot advocates, pilot organizers, and pilot negotiators who help to increase the positive impact our union has on our industry and our careers.
In October, ALPA held our 50th Board of Directors meeting. As several hundred pilot leaders came together, we demonstrated the breadth of talent our members contribute to the work of running this union. Flight training doesn’t teach you how to be a union leader; we all build our skills and rely on our experiences off the flight deck to demand the best for our members. By ALPA pilots coming together, we’ve melded our talents and experiences to build a union that’s more than the sum of its parts.
Since this administration took office just under two years ago, we set out to create a culture of collaboration to move this union forward. We’re one union rather than 41 separate pilot groups, and this unity has yielded beneficial results for our members. In the past two years, we’ve negotiated more than a dozen new contracts, secured an FAA reauthorization bill that advances safety and worker rights without making concessions that would erode hard-fought gains, merged with the Air Canada Pilots Association, and demonstrated our commitment to union solidarity across North America and the globe.
By working collectively, we’re moving our union forward together.