Suspensions of Service Insurmountable?

In the May, 2006 issue of Air Line Pilot magazine, Capt. Duane Woerth, the president of the Air Line Pilots Association, wrote, “The legal obstacles to a SOS (suspension of service) are virtually insurmountable.  The Railway Labor Act prescribes self-help actions by pilots at their own airline, but it does not permit an industrywide strike, which is the very essence of an SOS … The reality is we must continue to pursue dozens of individual strategies, each custom-cut to fit the situation and the affected airline.”

But what about the 1980 letter from the ALPA Board of Directors authorizing a national SOS to oppose the use of cockpit voice recorders for human factors studies?  Although the FAA eventually backed downed from the proposal, ALPA’s policy letter remains in force. 

Were the legal barriers not “insurmountable” in the CVR issue?  Was the CVR issue more serious than stolen pensions, outsourced maintenance, and the wholesale destruction of the airline piloting profession?

Sometimes it is simply too hard to surmount tall barriers when courage and will is lacking. 

The Railway Labor Act doesn’t allow for suspensions of service?  The stikes in Poland and the marches in India were against the law, too.  Sometimes moral imperative supercedes the law of the land.  Sometimes old laws are changed to the will of the citizens with the courage to fight.

The transit workers in New York last year had the courage and will to stage an “illegal” strike.  And they won.

[Read Lindsay Fenwick's entire presentation on the CVR issue at:  http://www.ntsb.gov/events/symp_rec/proceedings/authors/fenwick.htm]