ALPA President’s Committee for Cargo Talks Priorities

The ALPA President’s Committee for Cargo (PCFC) held a meeting during this year’s Air Safety Forum at which members shared their views on emerging issues in cargo operations and reviewed the latest developments on many of the committee’s top priorities for the months and years ahead.

“It is crucial that ALPA continues to push for one level of safety and security,” said First Officer Aaron Hagan, chairman of the PCFC. “Cargo pilots fly the same types of aircraft, over the same routes, through the same airspace, and into the same airports, as pilots who fly passengers. Our goal is to replace the outdated flight- and duty-time regulations and minimum rest requirements currently in place in the United States and Canada with science-based rules. In the United States, we need to bring cargo pilots under the newer, safer U.S. FAR Part 117 regulations as Congress originally intended. Our pilots, and the traveling public, deserve nothing less.”

ALPA’s cargo carriers, all of which are members of the PCFC, include Air Transport Int’l (ATI), Alaska Air (ALA), Calm Air (CMA), Evergreen (EIA), FedEx (FDX), First Air (FAB), Kelowna Flightcraft (KFC), and Wasaya (WSG).

The pilots in attendance pointed to membership in the PCFC as a crucial tool for cargo pilots to voice their views within ALPA and advance cargo pilots’ perspectives regarding legislative and regulatory issues on a national level in Washington, D.C. and in Ottawa.

Top on the PCFC members’ agenda is eliminating the so-called cargo carve-out and bringing all airline pilots under the Federal Aviation Administration’s new flight- and duty-time regulations and minimum-rest requirements. The committee is also focused on the increasing role of technology and the importance of making clear the value of professional pilots in the context of introducing minimally or remotely piloted vehicles into the national airspace.