Flipping the script from our usual format, this episode features ALPA President Capt. Jason Ambrosi as the guest, in conversation with Aviation Week's Karen Walker on the Window Seat Podcast. In a broad discussion that includes ALPA’s safety priorities and recent advocacy, Ambrosi covers his career as a pilot, ALPA’s work to pass COVID payroll support, the importance of pilots at the center of aircraft safety systems, and the ongoing efforts to urge the House and Senate to enact new law and technologies based on the lessons learned in the fatal midair collision near Washington, DC, last year.

ALPA’s Aviation Medicine Advisory Service (AMAS) has provided free medical consultations to U.S. ALPA members since 1969. ALPA president Capt. Jason Ambrosi welcomes Dr. Quay Snyder, ALPA aeromedical advisor and AMAS president/CEO, to explain the role of AMAS in advising pilots on how to stay healthy and compliant with medical certificate requirements. Snyder covers common pilot questions about whether specific medications are compatible with flying and how to accurately meet medical reporting requirements.

How do we protect commercial aircraft from the threat of unmanned aerial systems? ALPA president Capt. Jason Ambrosi talks with Col. Bill Edwards, director of counter-unmanned aerial systems operations at ENSCO, about the rapidly growing drone threat to commercial aviation and what it will take to counter it. Edwards discusses the evolution of small UAS driven by global conflicts, the scale of drone detections near U.S. airports, and how limited detection and mitigation authorities have constrained responses. He outlines detection methods (radar, radio frequency, optical, acoustic) and mitigation options suited for domestic use.