According to David Boyce, our Alaska Airlines head of maintenance for the state of Alaska, this is what happened:  This aircraft worked SEA-DCA-PDX-ANC yesterday on 11/30. The jumpseat was inop out of PDX to ANC with a MEL in the log book and DO NOT OCCUPY sign on the jumpseat. The plan was to fix it in ANC last night‎ but the parts were not available. Today, December 1st, this aircraft flew to PHX and is coming back to be fixed tonight in ANC as the parts should be here.

This is a Catagory B MEL which has to be fixed within three days. This is a high priority MEL as the F/As are not in their jumpseats, the loss of revenue from the two First Class  seats, and it looks bad to our customers. Please contact Ruth Ann, your local AFA officers, or your local Base Management Team if you have any further questions relating to this or any other safety related topic.

Thank you Ruth Ann for such quick action in finding out what was going on in this situation so we could share the information with our members.

A note from our ASHSC Chair, Ruth Ann Bledsoe

From the F/A’s Perspective:

• loud booming noise
• bright flash of light
• the aircraft may jerk or momentarily shake

In extremely rare occasions one might see St Elmo’s fire which is a large glowing ball of plasma energy float down the aisle. Lightning strikes typically hit forward of the wings 90% of the time, and 96% of strikes happen in clouds.

From the Pilot’s Perspective:

From the Maintenance Perspective:

From the Weather Perspective:

The Association of Flight Attendants has joined the American Football Coaches Association to help protect our children.  Why should we fingerprint our children?

• 450,000 children run away each year
• 300,000 children are abducted each year by family members
• More than 58,000 children are abducted every year by non-family members

That’s more than 800,000 children in America missing each year, one child every 40 seconds. Yet, when the National Child Identification Program began; less than two percent of parents had a copy of their child’s fingerprints to use in case of an emergency.

The National Child Identification Program is a community service initiative dedicated to changing these statistics by providing parents and guardians with a tool they can use to help protect their children. The ID Kit allows parents to collect specific information by easily recording the physical characteristics and fingerprints of their children on identification cards that are then kept at home by the parent or guardian. If ever needed, this ID Kit will give authorities vital information to assist their efforts to locate a missing child.

A gift of safety, from our AFA family to yours will be placed in your mail file.  We have ordered one kit per member for our base.

We will be hosting a Local Council Meeting and are asking you to save the date when bidding your December schedules. We would like to discuss our local committees as we need assistance on several of the committees.  We are looking at the needs of each committee and seeking those with a commitment to serve our fellow co-workers as our new term in office begins January 1, 2017.

Please save the date and plan to join us for this meeting!  Stay tuned for additional information!  We look forward to connecting with each of you!

MEC Officer Interviews will be held during the MEC Meeting October 24th-26th. MEC Officers serve a three year term.  We will be interviewing candidates who expressed interest in holding one of the MEC officer positions for the upcoming term of January 1, 2017 – December 31, 2019.

The five Councils will be represented at the MEC Meeting and will each cast one vote for each position.  LEC President, Lisa Pinkston will represent Council 30 at the October MEC Meeting.  Please email anc@afaalaska.org with any comments.