Age 67 Rule
 

So hypothetically, what would happen if age 67 becomes law, again hypothetically. Would there be any displacements, will everything stay status quo, or just stay hiring to be prepared for two more years down the road?

hypothetically, probably not much. It’s a different time then when 65 happened. I’m not in favor of 67 but I don’t think much would change. There would be some stagnation but in the grand scheme it would be short lived I think. And hiring would probably continue with maybe a break just to take a breathe and get caught up.

Catch up on hiring, eventually get staffed correctly and PM goes away for a while…maybe years. Upgrades would likely slow but not stop. I’m against it for what it’s worth.

I think hiring will continue.

The Venn diagram for pilots who both want to work past age 60 and can hold a medical is probably relatively small.

Also due to ICAO rules 65+ pilots would initially be limited to domestic ops, so any seniors who stay past 65 will need to move to domestic fleets... that could create churn on narrowbody fleets but it would be offset by vacated WB opportunities.

The ICAO rules create a wildcard: Can airlines require that a pilot be able to fly to all destinations served by his fleet? Even NB's go to CA, MX, etc. Will airlines have to accommodate seniors by intervening in their schedules to keep them domestic? Can airlines refuse to employ seniors since they can't fly international? Can airlines require that seniors bid around international? Some of this might have to get hashed out in court (age discrimination, reasonable accommodation), or it might be specified in whatever law raises the age. All these issues go away when ICAO raises (or eliminates) their age limit.

Hiring at the legacies would come to a full stop. Keep in mind everyone is over hiring with the anticipation of the retirements. Once the retirements come to a halt, the training cycles will stop (upgrades, transition) everyone will be over staffed overnight. Doubt there would be many furloughs since the extra pilots could be used to realize growth ambitions, but the hiring will stop. Obviously the big winners will the regionals who can finally catch up on staffing, and of course the ULCC’s who are having their own retention problems at the moment.

Oh, and of course the most obvious thing that’ll happen if 67 passes, these geezers will start screaming about age 70!

Except that at places like Delta are hiring over 2000 a year, yet retiring only about 600.... so there's that problem with your "hiring would come to a full stop" spiel......

I think UAL has plans to GROW their seniority list to something like 18,000 pilots (yes that was the plan in 2010 as well, but this time they mean it).

They have to lead the retirements that’s why. How many training cycles does one top pay wide body Captain retirement cause? It’s more than you think. You don’t retire a hundred and just hire a hundred, because that 100 retirements sends hundred(s) to training. They have to hire more. That’s why in this business we always “hire until we furlough”.

I don’t think it would come to a halt, especially at AA. Two years is pretty short. We are way behind on training and they could keep hiring and training in anticipation of the retirements resuming. It would actually allow the airline to catch up. Also, it takes a lot of work to re spin up hiring if they stop. I’m guessing we’d hire at nearly the same rate. Anyway, I hope we don’t find out.

Call to Arms, APA just sent out an email. If you think this is a bad idea fueled by greed and dementia send a sound off to your designated representatives/politicians. If anyone has ALPA link please post or repost. American@PullThePiggyFromTheTrough Thanks.

The majors are short staffed as it is. May help them catch up.

But, as Rick said, those that want to continue to work and can hold a medical will only be a portion.

Not much would change for hiring.

Progression to WB CA may move a bit to the right. May be an extra year for those a ways away.

Well great, pretty sure a "call to arms" and a "legislative alert" was the last thing that happened right before we went from 60-65.....

Of course then the unions were against it right until it looked imminent than they were for it so they could "steer" it as they said....

I don’t think so. Maybe it’s just the dementia of old age, but if I remember right there was no call to arms, the *****s in DC snuck it in in the middle of the night.

Make no mistake, this will definitely cause stagnation at the Legacies. I don't think hiring will come to a full stop but going from hiring 2000 a year down to 500 is not out of the question.

Almost every NB CA I've flown with has said if the age was raised they would continue flying. Reasons given are the wife would want them to, they have too many financial obligations, they didn't adequately save up for retirement (a lot of those people lost their pensions), and the new contract pay raises are just too much to walk away from and want to realize at least a couple years of that earning potential.

Every NB captain I’ve flown with has said the opposite.

who cares what they say? What matters is what they do, and 95% of AA pilots that stay until 65 now, will stay until they turn 67 or 68 too. And by the way, about 95% of AA Pilots who retired so far in 2023, were age 65 mandatory retirements. Over 90% were age 65 in 2022 as well.

knowing AA they will stop hiring completely until 6 months prior to the new mandatory retirement date. AA is too scared of being ahead of any kind of trend in the industry, especially hiring trends. Only hiring AA will do is to cover for any aircraft deliveries that may or may not get delivered from Boeing or Airbus.

Fingers crossed it ain’t happening.

I bet you, 90% plus will do it.

Most likely. Foolish really, but to each his own. My assumption is that by the time you get to 65, you are senior enough to drop your whole schedule, pick up one or two premium trips and use sick time when needed. You could get away with flying once a month if you had to and still make about a half million bucks a year with profit sharing and 401k. That's another million dollars earned in two years. How many people on this planet have that opportunity? Would I do it? I don't know, but I am planning for 60. I've got a military pension kicking in at 58 years old that's going to pay me $75,000 a year so that's worth $1.5M in the bank at a 5% withdrawal. How much money do you possibly need? You can't take it with you when you die and I definitely don't plan on leaving my spoiled kids that kind of money so they think they don't have to work hard for what they earn.

that’s my plan for my later years but don’t think you’ll get anywhere near 500k flying 1-2 premium trips a month. Profit sharing numbers are based off how much you work…

Maybe my math is wrong, but....with 1,000 hours of sick in the bank, you could take 40 hours of sick per month for 2 years. With 100% premium, two 3-day trips could be worth 60+ hours. That gets you to 100 hours. With next year's pay tables, that's near $500k for a NB CA with 17% 401k contribution at $350+ an hour. If it can be done, someone will figure it out. It amazes me how much brain power people put into working the system.

And ~17 years worth of sick time accumulation, under our pathetic sick policy.

CEOs have quite a bit of pull in congress to lobby against it. This age increase will not benefit the airlines since, it will increase pilots on disability, use of sick time, and oh BTW you can’t fly outside to most international destinations past 65 yr. How’s this helping pilot shortage?

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if they are for it. Stagnation would solve their regional lift shortage.

Kirby is already opposed to it. If you can’t use the pilots then there is no stagnation.

"My assumption is that by the time you get to 65, you are senior enough to drop your whole schedule, pick up one or two premium trips and use sick time when needed."

That's an incorrect assumption at AA for the large majority of pilots. It may be true for some narrowbody pilots who hold high value turns, and some widebody FOs who can drop an FO trip and have someone who is holding an FB pairing trade into it but for the most part scheduling's use of red/redder only lets you swap (1) weekend flying for weekday flying, (2) holiday flying for non holiday flying, (3) lower time trips for higher time trips, and (4) shorter trips for longer ones.

Spirit's schedule flexibility is so far ahead of ours it's like comparing a regional contract (us) to a mainline contract (them).

Understand that the mindset here is to have every warm body on the property flying as close to FAR limits as possible, and APA negotiates contracts that enables such behavior by management.

There is no wide body offset for the old guys moving to a NB. Regardless of this passing they are leaving the WB. There will be no change. What it will do is create a bunch of extra training events where no capacity exists and NB captain slots go to the ******* in diapers that won’t retire.

im not a fan if you can’t tell.

edit: personal opinion here but if this ****ball happens I think AA should send the old guys down to the left seat of the rj and remove the captain requirement for flows. Let the old guys teach the new generation on short haul turns if they really need the cash that bad.

go away please

Looks like they're trying to sneak this in at the last minute. No idea the crapbomb they're dropping on the industry as airlines have to firebomb the training and scheduling dept to accommodate pilots that can't fly international.
Any intel on how the senate commerce committee feels about this?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...67-2023-06-14/

So totally spit balling here. Isn’t it a part of our employment requirement that we can perform our duties unimpeded and unrestricted? So a 65 year old guy who goes back to the narrow body and can’t fly to the Caribbean, Mexico, South America, nor eventually to Europe on the XLR, is he/she still considered able to perform their duties freely and unimpeded? Doesn’t the company have a case for termination?

The idea that they’re going to reshuffle the entire planning department so these guys can have their domestic only schedules seems massively burdensome.

they accommodated way more anti-vax guys, but yeah, this will be a disaster

With age 65 I forget how long but two over 60 could not be in the seats at the same time. FedEx just pulled the over 60 FO and put a younger guy in it. I don’t remember if the over 60 FO was pay protected or not. Eventually I think the over 60 FO could see the over 60 bid awards and bid around their schedule

Was a pain for the company scheduling but they figured it out.

Well looks like it just passed the House.

No it didn’t. Keep reading.

Just passed thru the House Transpo / Infrastructure Committee. Not the House floor. Big difference.

Reportedly added to the house version of FAA reauthorization bill.