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outdated flight- and duty-time regulations and minimum rest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. |