Senate committee hears fixes to unpaid-leave bill after pilots, advocates raise coverage gaps

Senator Allison Clarkson, chairing the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing & General Affairs, heard Tuesday from airline and advocacy witnesses who urged changes to House Bill 4 61 (H.461) to make unpaid leave usable for pilots, flight attendants and survivors of domestic violence.

The Airline Pilots Association’s senior legislative representative, David Martin, told the committee that under the bill’s current hours-accrual formula a pilot or flight attendant “is extremely unlikely” to qualify because “pilots’ hours are calculated only for the hours we are in flight.” He said: “So when people see that a flight attendant or pilot works 70 hours to a hundred hours maybe a month, you know, that's...that's the way our hours are calculated contractually.”

The issue matters because federal rules and industry pay structures mean many flight hours (pre‑flight, layovers and standby) are not counted toward accrual formulas used in some leave laws. Martin said the Association seeks language modeled on federal…