Regulatory Update: Maintaining High Security, Safety, and Training Standards
By ALPA Staff
ALPA continues to push regulators to maintain high security, safety, and training standards for the U.S. airline industry and its workforce while monitoring and acting on efforts that could weaken hard-won gains of recent years. The following are among several issues the Association is addressing.
Secondary Flight Deck Barriers
In June 2023, Polly Trottenberg, then the FAA acting administrator, signed the final rule on the installation and operation of flight deck secondary barriers on passenger airliners. The rule was instituted after many years of ALPA advocacy and direct industry participation in the FAA Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee’s Flight Deck Secondary Barrier Working Group, which ALPA cochaired.
The rule mandates that affected operators must comply with installing these barriers on transport-category passenger airliners manufactured two years after the effective date of the final rule, June 2025.
ALPA has successfully continued its advocacy efforts to have secondary barriers installed on all passenger airliners. In the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, Michael Whitaker, the FAA administrator, was directed to convene an aviation rulemaking committee to review and develop findings and recommendations to require the installation of a secondary flight deck barrier on all passenger airliners operated under 14 CFR Part 121.
Mental Health and Aviation Medical Clearances Aviation Rulemaking Committee
In 2015, the FAA established the Pilot Fitness Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC), which ALPA cochaired, to assess pilot mental health following the Malaysia Flight 370 and Germanwings Flight 9525 incidents and to better understand the factors that discourage pilots from reporting mental-health conditions. While the FAA had acted on some of the recommendations in the 2015 ARC, a subsequent July 2023 report by the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General noted that pilot reluctance to disclose mental-health conditions still limited the FAA’s ability to mitigate safety risks.
On Dec. 4, 2023, the FAA chartered the Mental Health and Aviation Medical Clearances Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC), which the Association again cochaired. The ARC convened in January 2024 to continue the discussion regarding the barriers preventing pilots and air traffic controllers from reporting and seeking care for mental-health issues. The report was finalized on April 1.
The ARC developed 24 recommendations, many of which ALPA has long advocated for, to address these identified main barriers: culture, trust, fear, stigma, financial concerns, the reporting process, and a knowledge and information gap.
The ARC’s final report contained several recommendations, including
- creating a nonpunitive pathway for disclosing mental-health conditions and treatments;
- revising and evaluating the requirements for reporting and certification/qualification of psychotherapy (talk therapy), depression/anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder;
- ensuring that aeromedical screening protocols and requirements are based on safety management system principles (i.e., proportionate, relevant, and risk-based) and appropriately communicated to applicants;
- expanding the use and promotion of peer support programs;
- developing mental-health literacy, education, and awareness campaigns;
- increasing mental-health training and improving quality assurance for aviation medical examiners; and
- modernizing the FAA’s information management system/Aviation Medical Certification Subsystem.
Air Carrier Training Aviation Rulemaking Committee
The Air Carrier Training (ACT) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) was chartered on Jan. 21, 2014. Its members include ALPA and pilot, flight attendant, and dispatcher training stakeholders across FAR Part 121 and 135 air carriers, Part 142 training centers, and safety advocacy organizations. The ARC was tasked with discussing, prioritizing, and providing recommendations to the FAA.
The agency continues to review existing air carrier training and qualification regulations, policies, and guidance to ensure that they’re current and relevant. The FAA also continues to identify new challenges regarding changing technology and new research that may necessitate developing updated regulations, policies, and guidance. The ARC is a key resource in helping to identify and address these challenges.
The ACT ARC specifically addresses air carrier training and is tasked with
- developing and recommending to the FAA new or updated guidance material, notices, handbooks, and other related materials for air carrier training and qualification;
- making recommendations, including necessary rulemaking and additional tasking, to the FAA administrator through the associate administrator for Aviation Safety;
- discussing global air carrier training issues and developing strategies for international harmonization;
- providing documentation and technical information to support recommendations; and
- forming specialized and temporary task groups and providing ARC oversight to these groups to research, document, and make recommendations on specific, assigned topics.
ALPA continues to advocate on behalf of the Association as part of the FAA’s ACT ARC to help ensure the best possible training and qualifications standards. The Association’s Air Safety Organization representatives also participate on the ARC’s Flight Path Management (FPM) Working Group, which is currently tasked with developing mandatory go-around guidance associated with stabilized approach criteria that has low compliance.
ALPA also actively takes part in the ARC’s Flight Simulation Training Device (FSTD) and the Turbulence Training (TT) Working Groups. The FSTD Working Group is reviewing device requirements to effectively train each training task, the appropriate use of new technology simulation devices, and the simulator/training device certification process. The TT Working Group is developing recommendations that will reduce the number of injuries from turbulence encounters.
The Association also participated on the ARC’s Pipeline, Pathways, and Partnerships Working Group. In 2023, the FAA tasked the ACT ARC to form this work group with the Regional Airline Association and ALPA as the coleads to determine if the regulations should include additional pathways for becoming an airline pilot.
Public-Charter Loophole
Scheduled flying should be considered scheduled service and operate under scheduled service safety rules. But current rules allow essentially scheduled flights to operate under lesser safety rules. Since 2022, ALPA has alerted the Department of Transportation and the FAA about safety concerns surrounding the ability of some operators to fly 30-seat aircraft on very high frequency service but operate under FAR Part 135, not the scheduled rules of Part 121.
Part 135 operators aren’t required to use pilots who meet the Part 121 first officer qualifications and other important differences. This public-charter loophole was created purely by a language carveout inserted into the FARs many years ago that exempted “on-demand operations” from being covered by Part 121. This loophole allows some airlines to operate at a lesser standard while sharing the same airspace, with the same passengers, from largely the same airports. SkyWest proposed to stand up a charter operation using this loophole in 2022; airlines like JSX use it today.
The Association’s opposition to this model got attention. The FAA announced last year, and reiterated this summer, that it will propose a rule to close the public-charter loophole. ALPA strongly supports the FAA’s intention and believes this action will help maintain the unparalleled safety record of the U.S. air transportation system.
