US: When the pilot is a Mum: Accommodating new motherhood at 30,000 feet
Boarding a flight can feel like stepping into a time capsule — men typically fly the plane, while most flight attendants are still women. Which is why a female pilot from Delta did something dramatic at a union meeting recently. Standing before her male colleagues, the captain unbuttoned her uniform, strapped a breast pump over the white undershirt she wore underneath, and began to demonstrate the apparatus. As the machine made its typical “chug, chug, chug” noise, attendees squirmed in their seats, looked at their feet and shuffled papers. It was the latest episode in what has proved to be a difficult workplace issue to solve: how to accommodate commercial airline pilots who are balancing new motherhood. It is a question that some employers have answered by creating leave policies or lactation rooms. But the flight deck of a jumbo jet isn’t a typical workplace. Pilots are exempt from a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring employers to accommodate new mothers. At 30,000 feet, the issue touches not only on pilot privacy, but also aircraft safety. At Delta, a group of women pilots have banded together through a private Facebook page and have approached their union with formal proposals for paid maternity leave — unheard-of at the major airlines — because they say they would like to stay home to breast-feed their babies. At Frontier Airlines, four female pilots are suing the company for discrimination, seeking the option of temporary assignments on the ground while pregnant or nursing. While their proposals differ, all say they aim for one thing: to avoid situations in which pilots have been leaving the cockpit in midflight for as long as 20 minutes, the amount of time often required to pump breast milk. “The airlines have maternity policies that are archaic,” said Kathy McCullough, 61, a retired captain for Northwest Airlines, which merged with Delta in 2008, who has advocated on behalf of the pilots to Delta management. “I am so glad that they’re stepping forward and taking a stand.”<br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2016-08-17/general/us-when-the-pilot-is-a-mum-accommodating-new-motherhood-at-30-000-feet
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US: When the pilot is a Mum: Accommodating new motherhood at 30,000 feet
Boarding a flight can feel like stepping into a time capsule — men typically fly the plane, while most flight attendants are still women. Which is why a female pilot from Delta did something dramatic at a union meeting recently. Standing before her male colleagues, the captain unbuttoned her uniform, strapped a breast pump over the white undershirt she wore underneath, and began to demonstrate the apparatus. As the machine made its typical “chug, chug, chug” noise, attendees squirmed in their seats, looked at their feet and shuffled papers. It was the latest episode in what has proved to be a difficult workplace issue to solve: how to accommodate commercial airline pilots who are balancing new motherhood. It is a question that some employers have answered by creating leave policies or lactation rooms. But the flight deck of a jumbo jet isn’t a typical workplace. Pilots are exempt from a provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring employers to accommodate new mothers. At 30,000 feet, the issue touches not only on pilot privacy, but also aircraft safety. At Delta, a group of women pilots have banded together through a private Facebook page and have approached their union with formal proposals for paid maternity leave — unheard-of at the major airlines — because they say they would like to stay home to breast-feed their babies. At Frontier Airlines, four female pilots are suing the company for discrimination, seeking the option of temporary assignments on the ground while pregnant or nursing. While their proposals differ, all say they aim for one thing: to avoid situations in which pilots have been leaving the cockpit in midflight for as long as 20 minutes, the amount of time often required to pump breast milk. “The airlines have maternity policies that are archaic,” said Kathy McCullough, 61, a retired captain for Northwest Airlines, which merged with Delta in 2008, who has advocated on behalf of the pilots to Delta management. “I am so glad that they’re stepping forward and taking a stand.”<br/>
