With a focus on aviation weather, Christian Amaral represents the Air Traffic Services Group within the ALPA and is an Airbus 320 Captain at United Airlines. He currently sits on RTCA working groups that develop certification standards for new cockpit technologies, including its Turbulence Working Group. He also represents ALPA on the Steering Committee for an industry forum known as the Friends and Partners in Aviation Weather, where he has presentated on members’ needs and led programming.

In 11+ years with United, he’s flown the A320, 757, and 767 in domestic and transoceanic theaters. Before that, he flew all variants of the CRJ at ExpressJet/Atlantic Southeast Airlines for 8 years. Captain Amaral has logged nearly 14,000 total flying hours.

Prior to flying full time, he represented Flight Operations at Delta Air Lines on in-service evaluations of automatic turbulence reporting technologies, working with NASA and the FAA. That work followed a career change and flight training, having worked in politics for three years after college.

Captain Amaral holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from the College of the Holy Cross, and lives near Boston with his wife and two daughters.