October 4, 2013
ALPA Commends ICAO on Advancing Climate Change Policies to Reduce Aircraft Emissions
WASHINGTON—The Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA), applauded a recent decision made by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to move forward with the formulation of a Global Emissions Reduction Plan. ICAO also rejected the inclusion of commercial aviation in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS). ALPA has always considered the EU-ETS an illegal tax that would create an unlevel playing field for U.S. air carriers and lead to job losses for pilots.
While noting the key role that U.S. Ambassador to ICAO Duane Woerth played in the process, ALPA President Capt. Lee Moak added that today’s decision “makes clear that for any emissions reduction plan to be effective it must be applied globally rather than be an inefficient hodgepodge of regional plans creating burdensome and repetitive reporting requirements. Such a patchwork of plans could also result in the same flight segment being taxed more than once by separate entities, thus further eroding the economic health of the aviation industry.”
ALPA, along with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Department of State (DOS) have long advised against European Union (EU) plans to impose carbon emission regimes on foreign airlines flying in their airspace before the implementation of a Global Emissions Reduction Plan. ALPA also recognizes the leadership of Senators John Thune (R-SD) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) whose bipartisan legislation, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act of 2012, provided our negotiators the tools they needed to rebuff the unilateral EU-ETS and reach agreement on a global agreement that ALPA and the industry support.
Founded in 1931, ALPA is the world’s largest pilot union, representing nearly 50,000 pilots at 32 airlines in the United States and Canada. Visit the ALPA website at www.alpa.org.
Media Contact: Doug Baj, 703-481-4440, firstname.lastname@example.org