Originally Posted by
list
This may have been brought up before but I missed it. A huge limiting factor on airlines running smoothly is ATC staffing, why aren’t their retirement ages raised? Shoot, they also have a min age to be accepted in the program.
Because civil service politics and .gov pensions. If they "can" retire later, then they'll end up "having" to work longer for full pension and they know it.
They also have a max age to be accepted, because they don't want a "B" scale of controllers who cannot mathematically qualify for the pension before the max age.
Cognitive ability isn't that big of a deal anymore (same as for pilots). Most of those guys are video gamers these days, even over age 50... that goes a long way towards staying sharp in their specific cognitive niche. My buddies say they could all easily go to 60, probably even 65. Worst case, after age 60 they take you off the busy TRACONS and assign you to KZCA or the tower at KCID.