I remember looking up most junior captain at American in 2016. It was a ‘96 hire on the super 80 in LGA. Pretty sure someone hired at age 31 and not upgrading on an MD-80 while commuting to LaGuardia at 50 would notice.

Saying that won’t happen again sounds like Doug Parker saying the airlines won’t lose money again.

There are waves in aviation. Nothing is assured and today’s predictions are meaningless. Not to mention that some of these waves are already on the back end.

But the economic waves are independent of any hypothetical change in retirement age. Changing the age does not cause recessions, wars, etc. Those will happen or not, regardless.

Could you find a rare example who could have just barely upgraded, and somehow never been downgraded over 20 years of turmoil? Sure. But changing or not changing the age will not have that sort of effect on most people. Silver lining, the guy who got stuck as an FO got to enjoy good seniority and stayed married, compared to the guy who upgraded to junior reserve and stayed there for a couple decades.

I'm not even advocating for the change and if it looks imminent I might even grab an upgrade on the next bid for those reasons. But it's only going to have 2 year ish impact on most people.

Age 67/68 is not going to cause pilots to leave the industry in any sort of numbers. It will result in a small but net reduction in pilot demand for a couple years. Not long enough to solve the pilot shortage by any means.

If it correlates with a down economy and furloughs that wouldn’t have otherwise happened if the age didn’t change then yes people will leave.

No. Years of no hiring and no progression are the reason for the rising tide. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

We are nowhere near furloughs. Global pandemic and ground war in Europe involving the red army have not caused an economic collapse.

The presumed looming recession is not likely to be that bad. I wouldn't lose sleep over this just yet.

You may want to save your emotions. We are all just pawns.

ALPA sold us out last time and they will again.

This is a done deal because tier 2 carriers SWA JetBlue Alaska Spirit Frontier would be able to staff. The regionals are collapsing.

United and Delta don’t want to raise the age because they don’t have that problem and would love if tier 2 carriers can’t grow or even staff what the have currently.

Its getting worse by the day.

I guess I'd be the contrarian....the feds have been spending like a drunken sailor on a 401k loan. This inflation is a truly regressive tax that over time will kill the demand in many industries. We are doing everything to make sure oil stays high for quite some time, that's a huge tax that will effect all industries.

There was a pent up demand from the pandemic that we are working through, but unfortunately I sense that much like a party that has gone on a little too long, the hangover will strike and make many have a severe headache.

I truly hope you are right though, but I've been doing this long enough to see how demand/revenues can shrivel in a heartbeat and the airlines are left in a quandary with too much lift and too many employees in the span on one quarter.

CEO's and business media are also anticipating a mild recession.

It is true that there's a cost to all of the covid largess.

Also true that we are intentionally accepting at least some pain to put the stake in Uncle Vlad. I give the administration some pass on that because most Americans want to do it, including me. You can debate until you're blue in then face as to how much of the pain is due to pre-Biden covid assistance, post-Biden covid assistance, Biden policies in general, or RU sanctions. It's probably all of the above, but we shouldn't debate that here.

Remember older guys babysit the younger ones. That's the definition of " babysitting" and I've done plenty of that thank you. All for age 67/68. Not just an ALPA talking point stooge I can actually think with my own brain.