Originally Posted by
AllenAllert
I'm with you on getting rid of the age limitation. Why don't we ask for increased mental and physical standards of all pilots starting at age 23. The only downside is that many would not make it to 60 much less 65 or 67.
Your sarcasm meter is broken.
Do you seriously believe that humans do not experience physical and decline as they age? There's plenty of scientific literature on the subject and they've yet to find a Benjamin Button, although there are plenty of pilots who claim to be Benjamin Button.
Increased mental and physical standards: What are you going to screen for? What tests do you propose? What degree of accuracy do the tests have? What is the cost of the tests?
I think you're going to find that there's nothing out there that is reliably predictive for a reasonable price that could be administered to the entire pilot population. If you find something, please post it; I'm interested in seeing what's new out there.
Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Age 60 was always upheld in the courts on FAA testimony that pilots over 60 posed a increased safety risk. Once the FAA agreed pilots were safe up to age 65 kind of hard to make that case in court anymore.
There is no discussion at the ICAO level about raising the age again. Let's hope it stays that way!
Japan changed to age 65 prior to ICAO discussing raising the retirement age to 65. I would expect the same pattern of Japan being the leading edge of the age change, followed by several other countries, ICAO, and then the US.
The current acceptable incapacitation rate is 1%; there is a push to change it to 2%.
The 1% rule is:
The "1% Rule"
"If a professional pilot has an in-flight incapacitation risk greater than 1% per annum he is unfit for professional flying"
The reason for wanting to change from 1% to 2% is that some data (UK, 2004) shows that pilots above age 60 are exceeding the 1% incapacitation rate in some of the data they've collected. See slide 12: http://asmameeting.org/asma2013_mp/p...resent_266.pdf
Please note that slide 11, showing less than 1% mortality rate among males, is exceeding by US males starting at age 59, as per this table: Actuarial Life Table
The shift to 2% as an acceptable incapacitation rate will allow ICAO to raise retirement age beyond age 65. I'm sorry that I don't have a link to one paper pushing for 2% incapacitation rate (dated 2004), but here's the abstract: Flight Safety and Medical Incapacitation Risk of Airline Pilots: ingentaconnect
Originally Posted by
Aloha732
On my 65th birthday, I will be at the zenith of my seniority and pay.
The choice should be available to those willing to extend that for 2 -3 years, without penalizing those who wish to retire.
You and every other pilot is at the zenith of their seniority and pay on the day they retire (unless surplused/downgraded due to one's airline downsizing).
I'm quite amazed that you are unable to understand - especially after the change from 60 to 65 - that if even a single pilot continues past a set retirement age, all pilots who follow him will be negatively impacted financially due to delaying their upgrade. That is, if we want to frame the age extension argument in purely financial terms and ignore the increased incapacitation rate due to aging.