Power of the Canadian Dollar

Founded in 1970 as Brooker-Wheaton Aviation Ltd., the company known today as Morningstar Air Express Inc. is a Canadian cargo airline operating primarily as a subcontractor for FedEx. In addition to a contract, all-cargo FedEx service from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Vancouver, British Columbia, Morningstar offers ad hoc all-cargo charter services.

Notwithstanding its long-standing, stable, and profitable arrangement with FedEx, the post-COVID era has seen Morningstar struggle to retain pilot talent.

Morningstar ALPA Master Executive Council (MEC) chair Captain Chad Claringbold stated: “Many of our pilots are opting to move on to the majors. Others who we hired during the height of the pandemic for our ATR base in Calgary were originally furloughed from the majors.

Captain Clarigbold added: “Many of those pilots are now being recalled, making it even harder for management to sufficiently meet staffing demands.”

To curb attrition, Morningstar pilots represented by ALPA have entered into negotiations with the airline’s management in the hope of securing a retention bonus program by which extant and newly-recruited Morningstar pilots may be compelled to remain longer in the air-carrier’s employ.

In summer 2022, a survey devised and administered by the carrier’s MEC determined Morningstar’s pilots were amenable to the notion of a retention bonus program. Such an initiative has yet to be actualized, however.

In the absence of supplemental monetary inducements, Morningstar has remained doggedly about the endeavor of hiring as many qualified pilots as it can attract.

To the subject of the air-carrier’s recruitment conventions, Captain Claringbold remarked: “We’ve been losing people faster than we’ve been able to add them.”

Excepting the closure of the airline’s Montreal pilot base and a moderate bolstering of its Cessna 208 pilot cadre necessitated by the newly-codified and unprecedentedly-restrictive flight-and-duty-time provisions of CAR Subpart 703, endemic attrition has yet to occasion significant changes in Morningstar’s flight operations.

In early 2020, the Canada Industrial Relations Board certified ALPA the bargaining agent for Morningstar’s one-hundred-plus pilots. Within one year of joining ALPA, Morningstar’s pilots negotiated a 2021 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) which remains in effect through June 2027. The relationship between the airline and its pilots has since steadily improved. Moreover, the relaxing of Canada’s draconian COVID restrictions has seen the two sides meet with increasing frequency and heightened productivity.

In autumn 2022, Morningstar’s pilots and management engaged in arbitration of a key and complex issue, ultimately compromising to facilitate resolution thereof. In the months since, the two sides have amicably resolved their differences without invoking grievance protocols.

Captain Claringbold set forth: “We simply sit down with management on a quarterly basis and hash out any issues that either side has.”

Congeniality has enabled Morningstar’s pilot and management factions to work more efficiently and effectively toward the air-carrier’s long-term stability and prosperity. Nevertheless, finalizing a retention program and developing complementary means by which to promote pilot recruitment and foster aviator fidelity remains among the principal concerns of Morningstar et al.

FMI: www.alpa.org