Other priority issues include properly regulating lithium battery shipments, leveraging safety reporting programs such as the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) and the Flight Operations Quality Assurance program (FOQA), modernizing the North American airspace system, installing secondary cockpit barriers, securing all-cargo flight operations, and safely integrating unmanned aircraft systems in the national airspace. 

“ALPA remains committed to, and indeed heavily involved in, efforts to safely improve the capacity and efficiency of the National Airspace System,” said Capt. Rory Kay, ALPA’s Executive Air Safety Chairman. “We are also dedicated to ensuring that valuable voluntary safety reporting systems such as the ASAP and FOQA programs continue to flourish and that efforts to integrate unmanned aerial systems into our skies are made without impacting the safety of the NAS.” 

ALPA also called for a shift to a trust-based aviation security system that focuses on intent, rather than on objects. The union calls for a system that establishes the trustworthiness of each passenger through a combination of publicly available information, human interaction, and behavior-pattern recognition. ALPA framed its proposal in a recently released white paper titled Meeting Today’s Aviation Security Needs: A Call to Action for a Trust Based Security System. 

“Our layered aviation security system is in dire need of major reform,” said Capt. Robb Powers, ALPA’s National Security Committee Chairman. “Our proposal focuses on identifying people who pose no threat to aviation and quickly moving them through a screening process that is commensurate with the level of trust they have earned. This approach to aviation security is more sophisticated, more efficient, and significantly more effective than the current methodology.”