Dennis Miller
What about my Member
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2003
- Posts
- 200
After nearly a yearlong battle, Congress recently passed an FAA Reauthorization bill that includes provisions to certify flight attendants for our role as safety professionals. This is an important milestone for all flight attendants – it will help strengthen our role as air safety professionals and better define our status onboard the aircraft, to passengers and crew alike. AFA hopes to continue building on the success of this victory to ensure many more safeguards and improvements for our profession.
In fact, AFA’s Constitution and Bylaws specifically list certification as one of the primary objectives of the union. According to the Constitution and Bylaws, AFA’s Objective #4 is:
“To promote the interest of the profession and to safeguard the rights, individually and collectively, of the members of the Union by securing the long-range goal of flight attendant certification.”
We have finally achieved that “long-range goal” and can now build upon this success to improve our profession even further.
Until now, all work groups overseen by the FAA have been certified to perform their jobs. Upon completion of their training, every employee from pilots to parachute packers receives a certificate, which is required to perform their jobs. But flight attendants – who receive extensive safety training, and now, in the post September 11th world, are required to act as security personnel in the aircraft cabin – had never been certified. Our lack of certification allowed us to be categorized as second-class employees and continue to be viewed – despite our extensive safety and security training – by our companies, the government and the flying public as merely “waitresses in the sky.”
But no more. With passage of this legislation, we have finally been recognized as the professionals we are and received the respect we have long sought and deserved. No more will the government, our employers and the public be able to simply view us as servers in the air. We have finally been recognized for our safety roles and will forever be considered primarily as safety professionals onboard the aircraft.
Aside from the overdue respect and recognition we will now receive, certification provides a number of other important benefits. It will help lead to the portability of our jobs and make us more marketable to airlines that may be hiring, as it will standardize our profession and create incentives for airlines to hire experienced flight attendants over other applicants. An airline that hires a certified flight attendant would no longer have to send them through the entire initial training program; the airline specific training would suffice because the flight attendant’s certification would serve as proof that they had completed initial training.
Our certification will provide us with the ability to earn further recognition at the bargaining table. Management will now be forced to recognize that our professional role is an important piece in the safety of the entire aircraft.
Certification will also help improve our training. Currently, carriers are granted too many waivers, which allow them to skip or ‘water down’ crucial safety training. We hope to build on the success of certification to provide a level playing field for all training. When certified, flight attendants should receive the same level of training, regardless of the whims of their carriers.
Most importantly, certification would not require flight attendants to receive any new training or medical clearance. Flight attendants will simply receive certification for the training we are already required to complete. Nothing new will be required.
According to the new law, all current flight attendants will continue to serve as flight attendants; within one year of the law’s enactment, the FAA will issue certificates to all current flight attendants. In addition, the FAA has 120 days to issue certificates to flight attendants hired after enactment of the law or upon completion of recurrent training. The certificates will appear similar to those issued to pilots, and will contain each flight attendant’s appropriate information such as name and address, and will include the airplane group for which the flight attendant is certified.
Congratulations to everyone on this important victory and thanks to every one who kept the pressure on Congress and made this AFA victory a reality.
Now it will be more like “waitresses in the sky” packin' paper. More peanuts Mr. Bond?
In fact, AFA’s Constitution and Bylaws specifically list certification as one of the primary objectives of the union. According to the Constitution and Bylaws, AFA’s Objective #4 is:
“To promote the interest of the profession and to safeguard the rights, individually and collectively, of the members of the Union by securing the long-range goal of flight attendant certification.”
We have finally achieved that “long-range goal” and can now build upon this success to improve our profession even further.
Until now, all work groups overseen by the FAA have been certified to perform their jobs. Upon completion of their training, every employee from pilots to parachute packers receives a certificate, which is required to perform their jobs. But flight attendants – who receive extensive safety training, and now, in the post September 11th world, are required to act as security personnel in the aircraft cabin – had never been certified. Our lack of certification allowed us to be categorized as second-class employees and continue to be viewed – despite our extensive safety and security training – by our companies, the government and the flying public as merely “waitresses in the sky.”
But no more. With passage of this legislation, we have finally been recognized as the professionals we are and received the respect we have long sought and deserved. No more will the government, our employers and the public be able to simply view us as servers in the air. We have finally been recognized for our safety roles and will forever be considered primarily as safety professionals onboard the aircraft.
Aside from the overdue respect and recognition we will now receive, certification provides a number of other important benefits. It will help lead to the portability of our jobs and make us more marketable to airlines that may be hiring, as it will standardize our profession and create incentives for airlines to hire experienced flight attendants over other applicants. An airline that hires a certified flight attendant would no longer have to send them through the entire initial training program; the airline specific training would suffice because the flight attendant’s certification would serve as proof that they had completed initial training.
Our certification will provide us with the ability to earn further recognition at the bargaining table. Management will now be forced to recognize that our professional role is an important piece in the safety of the entire aircraft.
Certification will also help improve our training. Currently, carriers are granted too many waivers, which allow them to skip or ‘water down’ crucial safety training. We hope to build on the success of certification to provide a level playing field for all training. When certified, flight attendants should receive the same level of training, regardless of the whims of their carriers.
Most importantly, certification would not require flight attendants to receive any new training or medical clearance. Flight attendants will simply receive certification for the training we are already required to complete. Nothing new will be required.
According to the new law, all current flight attendants will continue to serve as flight attendants; within one year of the law’s enactment, the FAA will issue certificates to all current flight attendants. In addition, the FAA has 120 days to issue certificates to flight attendants hired after enactment of the law or upon completion of recurrent training. The certificates will appear similar to those issued to pilots, and will contain each flight attendant’s appropriate information such as name and address, and will include the airplane group for which the flight attendant is certified.
Congratulations to everyone on this important victory and thanks to every one who kept the pressure on Congress and made this AFA victory a reality.
Now it will be more like “waitresses in the sky” packin' paper. More peanuts Mr. Bond?
