Not to Thread Drift..
But I'd be surprised if we ever get an official 'opinion' from ALPA National.
BIG can of worms!
That being written, increasing the age above 65 creates as many new problems versus the amount of old problems it solves.
My opinion-
1) An age increase would allow some pilots to stay past 65 while on LTD. Hmm.. who is going to pay for that?
2) How do you certify someone to fly above 65 with regards to their cognitive skills? If they don't hack it in a sim or some sort of computer based test... then what?! LTD or forced retirement? Who designs the cog test?
*I had expected an uptick of deaths while on trips when the age went from 60 to 65 since they didn't change the medicals. As my therapist (Joking.. it's my girlfriend > fiance > soon to be wife!) would say- good to admit when you're wrong. I was wrong (happily so) about that one.
3) Who's going to be the one to sign off (bet) on raising the age?
We lost a great AME here in the EWR area (Doc D). Seems it's harder to find an AME now than before. So are we going to have enough AME's willing to sign off that someone that is 65+ is medically healthy to continue flying?
See 1 and 2!
End of the day, raising it to 65+ may help the RJ world (keeping some of their senior pilots who may also be LCA's) more than helping the Legacy world. Might help the industry as a whole by extending any possible pilot shortage a few years at most.
Don't think it's happening tomorrow but I would have lost the other bet as I expected that it would happen before 2020. (lol.. Gina is loving this)
But I also won't be surprised if it does happen at some point in this decade.
As far as the great seniority tool is concerned-
United Seniority
Great place to see (potential) info with regards to where you might be!
Mind you, I have progressively moved up since I started following it as we have lost pilots who were senior to me AND younger. Not the way I want to move up.
And you can't bet on anything that is there.. at least not 100%. But it does back up stuff that I figure out myself.
ie, if/when I can hold a certain seat.. where I should be and when..
Anyways-
FS, FP and FtC
Motch