I understand the angst against moving up the retirement age. I hope it gets raised for one simple reason. I would like to get on an airliner, after paying a high price to do so, and ACTUALLY BE ON TIME! I am so sick of hearing about No crew! Yes, I know this is the airlines fault. Yes I know they saw this coming. Neither of those things solves my problem as a consumer. Raising the age, even if only temporary, and for domestic only, gives them 2 years to catch up.

The word is out that being a commercial pilot pays well. Flight schools are filling up. The pipelines will be full in a couple of years. An age increase would allow the majors to stop hiring pilots away from the regionals at such a fast clip, allowing the regionals to catch up to the training gap. This would be a great thing for the industry and the consumer. Obviously a bad thing for the current pilots waiting to move forward.