Originally Posted by
Meme In Command
Lots of survivorship bias in here. Can't get the data on the individuals that have had significant enough mental and physical decline to lose their medical so they're not flying. But every company has the LTD data. The older you get the more likely you are to go out and the less likely you are to return.
Training failures, medical failures, LTD are irrelevant, the system worked in those cases.
The issue is the *risk* of cognitive decline which happens too fast to get caught by routine screening, or sudden incapacitation.
I'd also add the risk of elders not handling circadian disruption very well, that's a given and it's not tested for anywhere in our system (unless FO/IROs start filing ASAPs).
For those reasons there must be a retirement age IMO. It's just not the government's place to set that arbitrarily. I suspect but don't know that it's too low, but it might even be a little too high. They need to acquire and analyze some very specific empirical data. I'd be in favor of a gradual phase-in to avoid disruption/windfall, but not sure that would be legal.