I know him, he was hired a few months after me, super nice guy. When the geezers would ask him what he'd been flying, he would say, "Last week I was towing banners up and down the beach in Ft. Lauderdale, now I'm a Delta Pilot!"

I was not the baby in my class, I was 26, as was one other guy and a few in the two classes ahead of us. The baby in our class was 24.

But there were two geezers in my class, they were both 34!

One retired just prior to the bankruptcy, the other is still here and about 62 now. 6 pilots from my new hire class left prior to the bankruptcy, the rest are still here....and all but one are still senior to me!

When I was growing up, most of my airline pilot/instructors and mentors told me you had to get hired before you turned 28, or you were considered too old. I was bumming when I turned 25 and wasn't hired yet...but none of the Majors were hiring then, so all I could do was keep flying night freight and KC135's and wait for a call.

Of course we didn't have this fancy Internet thingy to get all the interview gouge.

North West was sued in about 1991 for age discrimination by some guys who were interviewed but not hired in the mid 1980's, they were in their 40's when interviewed. The pilots won, and NW had to re interview and hire a bunch of them (58 of them I think?), and give them date of hire from their original interviews.