For more than 80 years, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) has advanced aviation safety and security on behalf of pilots, crewmembers, and the flying public. During the early days of air travel, pilots lacked many basic safety provisions. That’s why ALPA’s founder and first president, Capt. Dave Behncke, brought pilots together with one goal in mind—to advance aviation safety. And that goal remains the core of our mission today. ALPA is the largest airline pilot union in the world, growing to more than 63,000 #TrainedforLife pilots at 35 airlines in the United States and Canada.
ALPA pilots safely transport hundreds of thousands of passengers and tons of cargo around the world every day, and our dedication to safety has helped make our aviation system the safest in the world. But our work doesn’t stop there. On Capitol Hill, ALPA pilots are busy fighting for world-class training, pilot qualification standards, and proven safety measures and regulations.
Our members’ deep-rooted commitment to #KeepFlyingSafe is year-round, and as we enter 2020, we hope you’ll join ALPA in calling on U.S. lawmakers to maintain and even improve safety and security. Explore ALPA’s top priorities below and complete the calls to action to do your part to ensure safe flying in 2020. You don’t need to be a commercial airline pilot or crewmember to make a difference!
The downing of four commercial airplanes and loss of nearly 3,000 lives on September 11, 2001, was due, in part, to inadequate protection of the aircraft flight deck. Today, while we have mandated hardened cockpit doors on commercial passenger aircraft, the cockpit remains vulnerable when those doors must be open due to standard operation of an aircraft. A low-cost, permanently installed secondary barrier would solve this problem and help ensure the integrity of our security system.
Many of the safety and security layers working to protect our passenger airline industry are absent from all-cargo operations. Cargo airlines fly the same aircraft, take off from the same airports, utilize the same airspace, and fly over the same cities as passenger aircraft. From a safety and security standpoint, there is every reason to hold cargo operations to the same standards as passenger operations.
A flag-of-convenience airline is a carrier that is established in a country other than the home country of its majority owner(s) to avoid regulations of the home country. Flags of convenience are often used to decrease labor costs and undercut established markets.
Commercial aviation is the world’s safest mode of transportation, and history shows that at least two fully qualified, highly trained, and well-rested pilots on the flight deck is an airliner’s strongest safety asset. Yet some special-interest groups continue to push for reducing the flight crew on board large aircraft—possibly down to even a single pilot—to cut operational costs.
Abnormal odors, smoke, haze, or fumes in the cabin may arise from various internal or external sources in an aircraft, creating a potentially toxic environment for both passengers and crew. Both the Senate and House of Representatives recently introduced bills that would strengthen laws around cabin air contamination onboard aircraft, and we need your support to have this bill become law.