Any DU thoughts on the FAA plan to raise airline pilot retirement age from 60 to 65?

[karlrschneider]

I've never been an airline pilot so my perspective is somewhat from the outside (DemoTex might weigh in here), all
my professional flying has been with corporations. Many of my flight students from years ago, most of whom have stayed good friends for the last 40 or so years, have also become airline (and military) pilots. My very first flight instructor
who taught me to fly in 1963 was a captain with Continental and forced to retire 3 years ago because he got to be 60.
We're the same age. We're both (some would say disgustingly) healthy, get annual physical exams and have between us
about 20,000 hours of experience. So neither of us have full-time flying jobs but we do a lot of contract piloting for
various companies when their regular pilots are unavailable, out with the flu, on vacation, etc. The people who own the multi-million dollar 'private' planes we fly don't seem to care about our age when they send their executives and families off with us sitting in the 'front office.'

We have other friends in their late 70s and even early 80s who still fly their own airplanes regularly. I wouldn't
hesitate to ride with them and take a nap in the back while they drive.

Not to disparage younger pilots who I'm sure have excellent training, but I do wonder sometimes when I ride in the back
of an airliner if that kid in the right-front seat ever really "flew an airplane"...as I was so lucky to do before
everything was computerized - be invited to "take her for a spin", a plane they never even saw before, just hop in
and go, as happened to me so many hundreds of times at a little airport in Tulsa where rules were invented as needed.
Lots of us then young pilots did that. We clambered into the airplane and literally figured it out as we flew.
Maybe that's learning the 'hard way', but was a good way. It's true that modern planes must be flown "by the book"
but the "book" might be written by someone who had no way to anticipate certain circumstances and who might have no
idea what to do when the 'glass cockpit' (which I love - as long as it works) goes dark. ;-)

Okay, enough reminiscing...just wondering how DUers feel about the FAA's proposal. :D

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

1. My Initial Reaction Is That It's Fine. Everyone Else Is Minimum 65 Right?

Actually, can't remember how long it's been since I heard a retirement age of 60.

[karlrschneider]

6. I guess in private industry, there's no standard. It mostly depends on Social Security

I suppose which "enables" retirement. But AFAIK this is the only area where the government has made
it mandatory.

[Ian David]

2. As long as they don't eat the fish...

[karlrschneider]

4. Just don't call me Shirley!

:D

[Crabby Appleton]

3. I'm all for it, I like having an very experienced pilot

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. Don't we all? I'm fine with raising the retirement age for commercial pilots. Makes sense to me.

[cynatnite]

5. People should retire when they want or when they are no longer...

physically and/or mentally capable of working. As for high risk jobs such as flying, the requirements should be strict and not entirely based on age, IMO.

[karlrschneider]

7. There you go, making sense again!

:D

By the way, the pilot who collapsed & died the other day was 58...so the age 60 rule didn't even
operate in that case. Hell, anybody can drop dead at any time. Our physical exams are pretty
good at catching predispositions for that, though.

[DemoTex]

9. A trusted source tells me FAR 121 age 65 rule change is just weeks away.

I am in favor of an increase in mandatory FAR 121 airline pilot retirement age, provided the FAA comes up with a meaningful set of criteria for AMEs (Air Medical Examiners). The FAA 1st Class Airman's Medical Certificate should require a much more rigorous physical exam than now. The current system looks only for gross abnormalities, with subtle physical and/or cognitive deterioration generally overlooked.

It will be up to the pilots and their airlines to work out the details of retirement systems. There should be provisions for early retirements and penalty-free medical retirements between 60-65. The percentage of airline pilots on medical disability generally increases exponentially as pilot ages approach 60. At my airline, almost 10% of the seniority list (including me) is on long-term disability (aka LTD or "medical retirement", although return to flying is possible from LTD but not from voluntary early retirement).

Increasing the mandatory retirement age for FAR 121 pilots also solves another sticky wicket for the federal government. As it stands now, those pilots whose pensions have been terminated (EAL, DAL, UAL, US, TWA, and others) are penalized severely by the PBGC. The current mandatory age-60 retirement is treated like a 5-year "early" retirement by the PBGC, and PBGC "pensions" paid to pilots are reduced by almost 33% over what the age-65 amount would be. To add insult to injury, the full age-65 PBGC "pension" amount is, typically, a very small fraction of the pensions that the pilots' unions negotiated, in lieu of wages (every contractual gain has a cost), that were subsequently terminated by management-friendly federal bankruptcy judges operating in the extremely hostile airline labor environment of the Bu$h administration. In fact, the US Airways pilots pension plan was terminated by a federal bankruptcy judge on 3/31/2003 at the request of US Airways then-CEO Dave Siegel. Siegel was fired a few months later, by the board, and sent home (and to his second home, on St. Martins) with a measly $10-million.

[Liberal In Texas]

10. Interesting.

People are much healthier and have sharper minds at older ages these days than when that FAR was written. I agree a more rigorous exam wouldn't be a bad thing, if even they just did it for older pilots.

My experience with taking an AME when I was a student helicopter pilot gave me the impression that the doctor was running us through like an assembly line. If you weren't diabetic and could read the color-blindness charts, that's about all that was required. (In fairness, I did have to get a note from my family doc that said my high blood pressure was controlled by meds, and the meds wouldn't interfere with my ability to fly.)

[karlrschneider]

11. And it ultimately (as always, it seems?) comes down to money.

You're right about the AME criteria, I kept a 1st class medical for years even though I didn't legally need it...and after deciding not to pay the extra cost discovered the 2nd class wasn't much if any different. Some people seem, however, to imagine that pilots are only interested in that aspect of
the profession - they somehow neglect to recall that in reality nobody has more incentive than we
pilots to keep everyone alive (obviously if we bang into something, we're the first to get smacked)

I can't add anything to the discussion on the airline union's position, never having been there but of course I have an interest in and complete sympathy with their plight because so many of my friends are
affected. Notwithstanding the idiotic interface with the government, some of the blame lies with the
airlines themselves having given into the idea that bean counters are the best people to run their operations, it seems to me.

[Liberal In Texas]

12. Yep, that old joke about being the first one to the accident...

Commercial pilots (never was one, but knew a few...) have a lot of economic pressure to not only fly in bad weather, but, perhaps, to keep flying aircraft when they should step down to a desk.

I'm in favor of the more rigorous med tests, and letting pilots fly even beyond 65 if they are competent.

[karlrschneider]

14. It's an interesting and sometimes difficult call.

I've only refused to fly 3 or 4 times in the ~40 years I've done it as a job. Airline pilots have a buffer between themselves and the 'boss', as it were...and often they can rely on the dispatch for
an 'excuse' if I can use that term. That said, I never got into trouble for making the decision.
The honchos may not have been happy but they took my word for it. Usually. I could write a book
about the exceptions. :-)

[Liberal In Texas]

15. I knew one pilot (TV chopper) who was piratically forced to fly in an IFR snow storm with only VFR

equipment. The implication was that if he didn't, he might be replaced. The storm was so bad, icing was problematic, IFR or not. He flew, and made it, but he was really steamed.

Another guy (who was going to start giving me lessons) was counting on my company to pay the extra lease money to replace our aging Bell JetRanger with a newer one before he embarked on a long trip. They wouldn't pay the exta lease money, so his company put the old bird through rehab. The mechanic that worked on the AC system (dangerously near the rotor transmission, I think, on JetRangers) did something wrong. The AC system failed in flight, stopped the rotors, and the helicopter fell out of the sky in west Texas killing him and a co-worker of mine.

I know pilots are supposed to have the last word about flying, but I still think there is way too much pressure on them to fly when the boss says go.

Now, private pilots. It's "get-there-itis". And sometimes no common sense or enough hours.

[DemoTex]

16. Money motivates the age 65 opposition, too: The junior half of the seniority list.

Opinion surveys done by ALPA still show a slight majority opposed to increasing the age 60 mandatory retirement age for airline pilots to 65. Hard to believe, eh? The bottom half of the seniority list, which are first officers (co-pilots), generally speaking, see a five year increase in the mandatory retirement age as a five year drag-chute on their career advancement (to wit: four stripes on their sleeve). Greed, however, is always short-sighted.

[Horse with no Name]

13. Well Nancy Pelosi is 66 or 67 I believe

and I wouldn't object to her running the country...so I guess I wouldn't object to someone younger flying my airplane.