The Strength Behind Your Union

As trained, tested, and trusted airline pilots, you understand that excellence doesn’t happen by chance. It’s carefully architected through preparation, discipline, and people who show up every day, committed to doing this high-stakes job the right way. The same is true of your union. ALPA is, at its core, a pilot-led organization, guided by the judgment, experience, and priorities of elected line pilots and strengthened by professional staff members whose role is to support, execute, and amplify that leadership. The Association’s strength isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a powerful partnership between pilot leaders who set the direction and an unmatched professional staff whose work, while often behind the scenes, directly shapes your experience as a member.

Over the past two years, that pilot-led, staff-supported partnership has delivered results that few organizations can match. ALPA staff has supported negotiations resulting in 14 new collective bargaining agreements valued at more than $20 billion, along with more than 140 letters of agreement and countless grievances handled in defense of pilots’ rights. These outcomes aren’t abstract wins—they’re the tangible results of pilot priorities translated into action, and they deliver better contracts, stronger protections, and improved quality of life for pilots across North America.

Equally important is how that work is delivered. Every system improvement, every communication, and every late-night call is about reducing friction for pilots, especially during moments when clarity, speed, and trust matter most. Following the PSA and Endeavor Air accidents, ALPA staff helped lead a coordinated, cross-departmental response that supported families, pilot leaders, master executive council accident investigators, and affected members with professionalism, discretion, and care during some of the most difficult moments the pilot community will ever face.

The Association’s professional staff also serves as a force multiplier for pilot volunteers. The union’s elected leaders are line pilots first, and staff expertise enables them to focus on being union leaders and airline pilots—without having to become full-time attorneys, analysts, or policy experts. Over the past two years alone, staff trained nearly 1,500 pilot volunteers across all four Air Safety Organization pillars and supported hundreds of local council meetings, elections, and governing-body ballots. The result is a volunteer leadership structure that remains closely connected to its members while being backed by deep institutional knowledge and professional execution.

This professionalism is also a strategic advantage when ALPA engages with airline management, regulators, and industry lobbyists. Staff played a central role in securing pro-pilot, pro-safety FAA reauthorization legislation, preserving pilot-retirement-age protections, stopping reduced-crew operation proposals, and maintaining first officer qualification standards. In Canada, staff advocacy helped secure landmark changes to the Labour Code through Bill C-58, banning replacement workers and strengthening pilot rights. Internationally, a coordinated advocacy and communications campaign successfully pushed back against European efforts to remove pilots from the flight deck. When the Association shows up in these arenas, we do so with professionals whose expertise often equals, or exceeds, that of those across the table.

Behind these wins is an organization that’s grown rapidly while remaining grounded in its values. ALPA now employs more than 400 professionals, with 43 percent hired in the last five years and a Canadian staff presence that’s grown more than fourfold in the past decade. We successfully integrated the Air Canada Pilots Association into ALPA, merging staff, finances, and operations without losing momentum or mission. Growth of this scale requires more than systems and headcount; it requires cultural resilience, institutional knowledge, and an intentional commitment to who we are as a union.

Operational excellence continues to underpin everything we do. Staff supported nearly 1,000 meetings across the Association, executed more than 200,000 payments through all-member and master executive council offers to return dues, launched a modernized alpa.org, deployed a new online membership application and administrative portal, released an upgraded DART system, and established a formal IT project-management office. These investments aren’t simply about technology for its own sake, they’re about making it easier for pilots to engage with their union and get the support they need, when they need it.

I share these accomplishments to reassure you. When you call ALPA, open an e-mail, attend a meeting, or face one of the most challenging moments of your career, you’re backed by a union that’s unmistakably pilot-led and professionally supported. Your priorities drive our mission. Your elected leaders set the course. And a dedicated, highly capable staff stands ready to execute in service to you.

This partnership between pilots and professionals is ALPA’s greatest asset. Together, it ensures that no matter how the industry evolves, your union remains ready, resilient, and relentless in protecting the profession we all cherish—today and for the pilots who’ll follow us.