The Right Time Is Now

On May 17, 2023, the time was right for Air Canada pilots to rejoin the professional pilot union community. When the history book is written about Canadian aviation, this story will be worth its own chapter as Air Canada pilots had come close to merging various times in the past. Countless hours were spent collaborating on a potential merger. Those attempts laid a strong foundation for the 4,800 Air Canada pilots to become ALPA members.

Why was this time the right time? It began as a movement rooted in the early months of the pandemic, which shook our industry to its core and made many pilots at Air Canada and around the world uncertain about the future. It started with a phone call among a handful of individuals with prior ALPA and Air Canada Pilots Association (ACPA) union experience. This group strongly believed there was a better way to do things, a way forward that would inspire all Air Canada pilots to realize our full value as professionals.

The movement gained momentum, as every week during the pandemic the group met via Zoom, becoming stronger behind a shared common goal to dramatically improve the profession—returning to the basics of unionism and leaning into the power of labour and unity. Pilots for Change, dubbed “Pilots for ALPA” by those who only saw it as an organizing drive, was much more than that. It was a movement created to fundamentally change the culture of the Air Canada pilot group—to realize when Air Canada pilots enter into an agreement, the impact reverberates across seniority ranks and the greater industry as a whole. Once coming to that realization, it became clear that remaining an independent association was untenable because improving the profession in isolation wasn’t working.

It’s not easy, however, to change the minds of pilots, especially a group with a long and complex history. When Air Canada pilots left the Canadian Air Line Pilots Association in 1995, it financially destroyed that association and ultimately resulted in its demise. A grassroots movement, ACPA was formed later that year, with the new union paying some dividends for the pilot group. Yet there were many tumultuous and unity-testing moments for Air Canada pilots in the following decades.

This new grassroots movement kept on, especially when some of the most active Pilots for Change supporters paid an extraordinarily high price for expressing their unwavering support for positive change. After all, a corporation that over the years has acquired a firm influence doesn’t let go without a fight. But a true union can’t continue to make decisions out of fear and stay paralyzed by the past, so progress continued.

Strength in unity started to mean more than just words when the company presented the pilot group a concessionary memorandum of agreement with modest gains in fall 2022. Of the 93.3 percent who cast ballots, 79.6 percent resoundingly voted “no.” It wasn’t the time for concessions, it was the time for solidarity. The ACPA Master Elected Council then saw some significant changes with seven of the 11 seats being filled by former ALPA members. For the first time in years, there was real unity within the MEC.

After surveying the membership, the path was clear: to pick up where merger talks left off in 2018 and continue pursuing a way for Air Canada pilots to rejoin their professional colleagues in the world’s foremost pilot union. Leaders on both sides fully committed to the process, and on March 9 an ALPA-ACPA merger agreement was formalized. On May 1, after a month of member engagement on the details of the potential merger, the vote closed. With 91.6 percent of the pilots casting a ballot, 84.2 percent of those voted “yes” to the merger. This was the right time. It was the time for Air Canada pilots to rejoin the professional pilot union community in a meaningful way—to contribute to protecting the profession and making it a profession we can all be proud of.

Canadian Geese always fly in a flock, in a deliberate formation. It’s nature’s embodiment of being strong together. Air Canada pilots are proud to be flying in formation with our fellow ALPA pilots.

This article was originally published in the June 2023 issue of Air Line Pilot.