Originally Posted by
RemoveB4flght
This.
They probably won’t feel the effects of this for a while while the hiring market is strong, until the next industry event hits. The reality will set in for them when they are sitting captain reserve or their standing bid for a senior base goes unfilled a couple more years while those of us who sat frustrated through age 65 bid ridiculously easy schedules and take all the cherry vacation slots and pad another million or so in 401k growth.
Which is yet another thing that makes this a nothing burger compared to the 60 to 65 change.
Not only do you lose a fair number of pilots on the way to age 65 to retirement, LTD, and medical issues, but the more senior they become GENERALLY the fewer actual flight hours they do fly due to the buildup in vacation time, and the increase in seniority (and knowledge of how to work soft pay). Not only are you only talking 40% of the POTENTIAL person-years compared to the move from 60 to 65, the reality (in terms of flight hours) is less even than that.
I rather expect that if this 65 to 67 change did go through (and I doubt it will) and a big economic downturn came, managements would do very much like what some did with COVID, offer early retirement or LOAs to allow those within a couple years of retirement to try to get rid of their most expensive and least productive employees to spare the junior people from furloughs, not because of any great love of their junior people, simply because they fly more hours and cost less money.