Panel Splits on Raising Airline Pilot Retirement Age
#12
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: May 2011
Posts: 239
If they were to ever increase the age again there needs to be some type of phase in process. That last deal of adding five years with immediate effect harmed one generation of pilots while aiding another.
A personal example being that our family spent the five additional career years at the Regional FO wage, while another family spent the five additional years at top-end Mainline pay. That's why I could not previously support the push for age 65. Without a slow transition to any new rule (age, based on medical, etc.) keeping some movement alive in the industry, too many suffer all at once while others gain.
The true winners the last time were the airlines, and they wasted those years seeking concessions and kicking the can on making the industry desireable.
A personal example being that our family spent the five additional career years at the Regional FO wage, while another family spent the five additional years at top-end Mainline pay. That's why I could not previously support the push for age 65. Without a slow transition to any new rule (age, based on medical, etc.) keeping some movement alive in the industry, too many suffer all at once while others gain.
The true winners the last time were the airlines, and they wasted those years seeking concessions and kicking the can on making the industry desireable.
#13
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2008
Position: Retired
Posts: 651
Would you rather have a healthy 75 year old with normal vision, excellent health and a lifetime of experience flying you around or the 45 year old that is overweight and barely able to pass the medical exam flying you around..? Whatever happened to common sense? We have testing and screening for a reason. Let it function. Away with arbitrary and unreasonably discriminatory rules.
The problem is not sudden incapacitation, which is what the Medical Certificate system is designed to protected against, it is cognitive decline.
We can not even reliably diagnose early Alzheimer's, let alone determine that someone is getting through a PC based on 40 years of practice but will be clueless on a real world crappy non-precision approach.
Some careers lend themselves to old age, lawyers for example. Others do not, such as professional racing, law enforcement and ATC. We fall in the later group. And until there is a way to evaluate cognitive decline at what are for the general population low levels, we have little choice but to draw a hard line.
And yes, Parts 91 and 125 have older pilots. They also have stories about pilots who should have retired but didn't.
#14
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2006
Position: B-737NG preferably in first class with a glass of champagne and caviar
Posts: 5,886
#15
One set of lottery winners at the expense of everyone else.
#16
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Apr 2011
Posts: 1,432
Some careers lend themselves to old age, lawyers for example. Others do not, such as professional racing, law enforcement and ATC. We fall in the later group. And until there is a way to evaluate cognitive decline at what are for the general population low levels, we have little choice but to draw a hard line.
#20
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