42 Pilot Groups, One Union
By Capt. Jason Ambrosi, ALPA President
Every year we dedicate the first issue of Air Line Pilot to the successes and challenges our pilot groups faced the previous year. By doing this, we set the tone for the next year: we’re 42 distinct pilot groups working toward our own goals, but we’re united as one union. Entering the third year of this administration, our goal is to keep fostering that unity and continue building an Association in which our solidarity across our 42 pilot groups leads to a union that’s more than the sum of our parts.
The benefit of a union that represents the vast majority of airline pilots in the U.S. and Canada is that we can combine our voices to demand more from management, regulators, and lawmakers. Reading the profiles of each of our pilot groups, it’s clear that we all face our own unique operating environments. But looking closer, similar threads connect us all.
This edition of Air Line Pilot tells the individual stories of our pilot groups, but the full story of 2024 is more than our individual stories—it’s how we helped each other. Air Borealis, Air Canada, Alaska, PAL Aerospace, Keewatin Air, and WestJet Encore pilots didn’t secure new contracts alone. Air Transport International, Breeze, FedEx Express, and Frontier pilots didn’t picket alone. iAero, Lynx Air, Mesa, Ravn Alaska, and Spirit pilots didn’t face furloughs and layoffs alone. Every step of the way, and as shown in many of these profiles, ALPA pilots worked together across borders and airlines to help advance the interests of all airline pilots.
From facing the most intransigent of managements to the ongoing battle to enforce our ratified work agreements, the unity of ALPA pilots who stood together as one union was key to the accomplishments of our pilot groups. This connection among pilots is fundamental to preserving the safety and stability of our profession and industry, and it’s embedded in the way we foster the next generation of pilots, honor the lives lost in aviation tragedies, and celebrate each other’s accomplishments.
As you’ve seen, the image on the cover of this issue depicts an aircraft with a wing missing. It’s a stark reminder of the fact that an aircraft won’t fly if critical pieces are removed, and this applies equally to having at least two experienced pilots on the flight deck at all times.
There’s a growing effort to remove pilots from the flight deck in favor of automation, which raises significant concerns about safety. Just as we approach representing our members with a strong culture of collaboration, we’re committed to working together to fight the threat of reduced-crew and single-pilot operations. Through our “Safety Starts with Two” campaign, we’ve brought together the international airline pilot community, along with international transportation union members and other industry stakeholders, to tackle this threat head-on.
Recognizing that it doesn’t take an aviation expert to understand that an aircraft with only one wing makes just as much sense as flying with only one pilot, we’re deploying imagery like this across the world to inform lawmakers, regulators, industry stakeholders, and members of the public about the risks of reduced-crew and single-pilot operations. In 2025, we’ll continue building this coalition to stop what I see as one of the greatest threats to safety our industry faces.
Just as the profiles of each of our pilot groups tell the story of one union working together to advance the needs of all our members, our work to defend the safety of our industry against threats like reduced-crew operations is a story of collaboration and unity across industries and the globe. Whether a pilot group has tens of members or tens of thousands, is in the U.S. or Canada, or flies cargo or passengers, we all gain the benefit of more than 79,000 different experiences and sources of ideas to accomplish our goals. Out of 42 pilot groups and 79,000-plus members, we are one united ALPA.