By Ken Pole | December 8, 2017 Estimated reading time 3 minutes, 18 seconds.
Having more than tripled its Canadian membership over the past 15 years, is Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA) hoping to draw Air Canada’s 3,600 pilots into its orbit?
Comments by ALPA president Tim Canoll at a Dec. 5 reception in Ottawa could be interpreted that way, and the Air Canada Pilots Association (ACPA) doesn’t seem unreceptive.
ALPA Canada board president Dan Adamus, a Jazz Air CRJ-200/705 captain, set the stage by noting that when the first reception was held in 2002, ALPA had only about 1,500 Canadian members from five carriers. The tally today is more than 5,000 pilots who fly for 11 carriers.
“That number will continue to grow in 2018,” said Adamus before introducing Canoll, a Delta Airlines MD-88 captain based in Atlanta and former U.S. Navy Reserve F/A-18 fighter pilot.
Three years into a four-year term at ALPA, Canoll told the government and industry guests that the successful campaign to unionize 1,400 WestJet pilots had been a “dramatic step” which could pave the way for continued ALPA growth.
“We are going to increase it,” he said, chuckling that there were “a lot of Air Canada pilots in the room.”
Asked to elaborate, Canoll told Skies that, “we have a very close relationship with the Air Canada pilots.” While he declined to go into details, he confirmed that “both sides are working hard to make it even closer–ultimately, as close as we can.”
He said the more than 3,600 ACPA pilots are “the final piece of the puzzle” in Canada now that ALPA had been certified the week before as bargaining representative for their nearly 500 counterparts at WestJet’s regional Encore operation.
ALPA is the largest pilot union in the world, representing more than 59,000 pilots at 33 U.S. and Canadian airlines. Adamus pointed out that Encore pilots were the third Canadian group to join ALPA in 2017.
ACPA spokesperson Christopher Praught told Skies in a Dec. 7 email that ACPA “continues to explore and investigate potential avenues to achieve greater pilot unity in Canada and globally, including with ALPA.”
He suggested that the ongoing campaign on pilot fatigue is a good example of how increased numbers can give pilots more leverage in dealing with airlines and regulators, in that ACPA’s “leadership in the Safer Skies coalition . . . has brought together more than 8,000 pilots to advocate for improved fatigue rules.”
In continuing to “investigate potential avenues to achieve greater pilot unity in Canada and globally,” he said the organization will be working with ALPA “to explore potential structural changes which would accommodate the Air Canada pilots, and more broadly, fellow pilot groups across Canada.”
