CAPA CORRESPONDENCE

The Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations (CAPA) has been very busy recently on Capitol Hill addressing its two top priorities for this Congressional session. This “Top and Bottom” approach includes changing the current bankruptcy laws to protect airline labor contracts in Chapter 11 and the requirement that all part 121 operators hire pilots with an FAA Airline Transport Pilot License (ATP). Both of these issues have safety implications for our industry. Protecting the wages and benefits of the safety professionals in our industry would stop the upheavals that affect their livelihood thus reducing the human factors that cause incidents and accidents. The requirement for an ATP would increase the training, experience and maturity of the industry’s entry-level pilots and provide “one level of safety” for the travelling public. Captain Chesley Sullenberger recently commented that the “airline with the best safety record has the highest hiring standards” when referring to Southwest Airlines.

As pilots we should view these two issues from a contractual standpoint as well. The bankruptcy code as it currently exists has allowed airlines that were poorly managed to use the bankruptcy courts to gut labor contracts and dump employee pensions on the US taxpayer via the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) instantly making themselves more cost-competitive, driving down wages and benefits. If the bankruptcy code can be changed to prevent the easy abrogation of labor contracts then airline management will have to be more responsible from a managerial and fiduciary standpoint.

The requirement for all pilots hired by a part 121 scheduled operation air carrier would also level the playing field between mainline and regional carriers by stopping the current practice of hiring 250 hour pilots with only an FAA Commercial Pilots license at pitifully low wages placing downward pressure on pilot contracts. Currently 52% of commercial operations are Regional Airlines carrying 25% of the passengers system-wide.

TOP - CAPA worked closely with House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law Chairman Cohen (D-TN) in holding a hearing on “Protecting Employees in Airline Bankruptcies” last December. The hearing featured the testimony of “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot, Captain Chesley Sullenberger, CAPA’s Government Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Coffman from the Allied Pilots Association and US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA, a CAPA member association) Government Affairs Committee Chairman Arnie Gentile.

CAPA has since met with House Judiciary Committee and Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee professional staffs expressing our desire to change Judiciary Chairman Conyer’s Bankruptcy Reform Bill so as to reflect CAPA’s proposal to protect airline labor contracts commensurate with railroad labor contracts. CAPA attended these professional staff meetings with representatives from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Airline Division Representatives who also supports CAPA’s changes to the bankruptcy code. Chairman Conyer’s 111th Congressional Bankruptcy Reform Bill has not yet been introduced and CAPA is pushing hard to have our proposed language included in the latest version.

CAPA simply wants the following verbiage included in the bankruptcy reform bill in regards to airline bankruptcy “neither the court nor the trustee may change the wages or working conditions of employees of the debtor established by a collective bargaining agreement that is subject to the Railway Labor Act except in accordance with section 6 of such Act.”

BOTTOM - CAPA was pleased to report that HR 3371 the “Airline Safety and Pilots Training Act of 2009” was passed last fall by the House of Representatives with 409 votes. CAPA President Paul Onorato was part of the “round table” discussion with House Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Costello and Ranking Member Petri, among other committee members, where many of the tenets of HR 3371 were discussed.

Currently CAPA, under the guidance of its lobbyists Jim and Jack Albertine, are engaged in a campaign to support Senator Chuck Schumer’s S 1744 “Enhancing Flight Crewmember’s Training Bill” which would be Senatorial language requiring an FAA Airline Transport Pilot license for all pilots hired by part 121 operators. The bipartisan S 1744 has 7 co-sponsors including Republican Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine. Senator Schumer of New York wrote the bill in the aftermath of the fatal crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 in Buffalo in February of 2009. The families of the Buffalo crash victims have been working closely with CAPA Vice President Jeff Skiles (Sully’s First Officer) and are very supportive of the minimum hiring requirement of an Airline Transport Pilot license for all part 121 pilots.

The FAA Airline Transport Pilot license requires 500 hours of cross-country, 400 hours of night flying and 75 hours of instrument or actual flight time. The first officer of Continental Connection flight 3407 was heard on the cockpit voice recorder admitting that her first exposure to icing and actual flight conditions was during her initial operating experience at Colgan Air (Continental Connection). I think we can agree that the conditions allowing this situation to exist are unacceptable. FAA Administrator Babbitt has recently come out in favor of the language in HR 3371 and issued an early proposed rule change regarding the syllabus requirements for the ATP. Today’s high-speed, high-altitude, high-tech Regional Jet cockpits require two highly trained professional pilots to ensure the safe operation of these aircraft throughout the congested airspace and arduous weather conditions that mainline carriers operate in.

I am confident that CAPA will be successful in its “Top and Bottom” approach to increasing the safety of the travelling public and improving the state of the piloting profession through these two important initiatives. CAPA as a trade organization is in a unique position to represent the piloting profession as line-flying pilots focused on issues of safety, security and the value of a highly trained crew.

Respectfully,

Captain Paul Onorato
CAPA President