Last Friday, Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill that funds the government into 2012. Earlier in the week, Capt. Lee Moak, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l, sent a letter to Congress, urging legislators not to include in the bill any increase in the lending authority for the Export-Import Bank of the United States until a further debate could be held on the merits of aircraft financing to foreign carriers. ALPA was successful in keeping the bank’s lending increase authority out of the year-end omnibus as Moak requested.
It is ALPA’s goal to increase the transparency of the Export-Import Bank’s aircraft financing, which makes up approximately half of the bank’s lending capacity. ALPA believes economic impact studies should be done on every proposed aircraft financing deal beforehand to ensure that the impact on U.S. jobs is actually a positive and not just assumed so. Our concern is that some of the transactions the bank is undertaking related to aircraft financing are costing U.S. pilots jobs in the international marketplace.

Giving foreign airline competitors a financial advantage over U.S. airlines with favored-bank financing is allowing foreign competitors to serve the same routes as our carriers, but at lower costs. The effect on U.S. pilot jobs has been significant and increasing the bank’s lending cap and allowing it to engage in further financing, without any increased transparency or economic impact studies, could result in further loss of U.S. airline jobs