Enhanced physicals/1500 hours ATP Rule/Physical Fitness test similar to the military/Age 65 vs 67 and my suggestion on another thread police style body cameras to catch performance degradation. Can anyone argue that if you sit on the flight deck of an airliner you don't carry every bit the same responsibility to the public as a law enforcement officer while making a whole lot more money? EVERYONE is about safety and the traveling public until it adversely affects them or their bottom line.

An Update On Recent Events
Casey Murray, President
Much has occurred in the last week, and an update is in order. By now, most of you have heard talk of legislation being introduced to increase our retirement age from 65 to 67, possibly 68. Our Union’s long-standing position, as reflected in the SWAPA National Airline Policy (NAP), is that we are opposed to changing the FAA mandatory retirement age. The NAP, approved each year by our Board of Directors, guides our Government Affairs Committee as they represent our membership’s interests in Washington D.C.

I can’t believe they’re polling on this. Every year it gets voted at the BOD level to disagree with any push past age 65. Now we poll just to be double triple sure we don’t want this? Unbelievable. When the results come out 65-35 against pushing the retirement, we will look listless and weak.

Real strong backbone there, SWAPA.

Necessary defensive move. If they don't have a recent poll or vote on the issue, members opposed to the official position can claim that the membership wasn't asked (years ago won't really count).

I hope that the bottom half of the seniority list votes NO with near unanimity! Increase in retirement age harms virtually everyone except for a very few who are the last few years of their careers. You can’t move the goal posts in the middle of the game! No FO should have to wait a further three years to upgrade while the pigs feed at the trough! No junior pilot should be stuck on a trans-con commute to reserve… or stuck flying weekends… or holidays… enduring stagnation, so that pilots who have had decades to prepare for retirement could be given a few more years at the top of the list.

PLEASE TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR CLASSMATES, JUNIOR CAPTAINS, and get them to vote NO. There are more captains than FOs, and if we don’t organize and vote like our careers depend on it, we will stagnate as others prosper.

Too bad they didn’t have “F**!< NO” option…. Settled for a simple no.

Quickest SWAPA poll I've ever taken.

For the win 🥇

Body-cams mean wide body flying will go junior :-)

Agreed completely
 

And if it goes yes, I personally don't see staying at SWA. Already updating my apps. 3 years still on reserve, already a ten year upgrade, and they want to increase it? And SWA is legendary for putting the needs of the most senior 5% over the rest of their pilot group. There is a wall, and on it I see some writing...

do you think other airlines will be affected less so than SWA? Less than 500 pilots retiring from SWA in the next 3 years...

The ULCCs are probably not affected much by the change.

The whole idea is to slow down the hiring needs at the big 3, which is what's causing the attrition at other carriers. Slow it down so OO only loses 100 pilots per month.

Looking at the thread on the WN union page, it seems the 60/30 is accurate.

It won't matter. It could be 100% opposing the change and it still won't matter.

I suspect SWAPA already knows what they intend to do.

Look how they handled vacation. They polled us on changes to vacation bidding in what, 2015? The pilot group overwhelmingly asked for a change… and here we are in 2022, with the senior folks still block bidding the whole summer and using those weeks as a commodity to trade for premium weeks throughout the calendar, then bidding premium over the summer vacation that some family with school aged kids would’ve given their right arm for.

Is SWAPA the pilot group that is behind the push? Are they individually lobbying Lindsey Graham? Are they acting in conjunction with other unions, or just doing what they want to do? Is the SWA pilot group pushing SWAPA, or is it SWAPA pushing their pilots?

I think SWA already has an insanely high upgrade time and slow movement compared to others. So it would just be the straw. We are at what, 12 years upgrade right now? And people are sitting on reserve, often commuting to reserve out of base, for 4-5 years?

It is a senior pilots game at any airline but I feel like at SWA more so than most. Guys that might have spent one month on reserve repeatedly voting against reserve protection while the rest of us are sitting on reserve for years in a row getting hammered every day. Unable to get good vacation. Displaced, commuting long distances. I may be wrong but I sure feel like the difference between a senior SWA CA and a junior FO is like Bezos vs. one of his factory workers. I'm personally over it.

The management at airlines are behind the push. Reducing training costs for two years is a big savings for all airlines. They're probably making a lot of campaign contributions right now, spreading it around among politicians they expect to be in office next year - good timing since it's an election year.
They'll trot out some willing pilots to testify that raising the age is a good thing to help alleviate the shortage. They'll get AARP support on it to oppose age discrimination. They'll point out that it will save the social security trust fund money.
But all of that's kubuki theater for the public - the political contributions will ensure passage of an age change. We're just pawns in the game.

My guess is that ICAO's rules will also change within a year or two after the US. Because you can bet there will be plenty of palms greased.

Exactly right. Jeffery Skiles is already being used to push for the age increase. It will be exactly like last time without any extra cognitive testing or studies and we all know it won't solve a thing.

You're insinuating it's SWAPA's move when they are actually the ones who raised the alarm about this legislation being proposed?

I’m not so sure. That’s an extra 3 years of long term disability depending on the airline, and especially if they add cognitive testing I’d bet big money on pilots hitting 65 then sandbagging the cog screen so they can golf for dollars.

As long as ALPA does not get behind age 67, good luck pushing this through the Dem controlled House and Senate.... or Biden's veto if the Republicans take Congress in the midterms. This is why we back the PAC.

His name is Sully’s Co-Pilot. Get it right, sheesh.

The PAC bribes politicians on both sides of the aisle. If this is going to happen, it’s going to happen with or without our consent. We are just small fish in a big swamp when it comes to DC politics.

I personally don't support raising the retirement age, but welcome to the career of pretty much every late 90's, early 2000's hire at the majors. Not that long ago I was flying with captains who had spent 18-20 years in the right seat. And these guys were commuting from the west coast to NYC, just to be able to hold captain.

My money says it's going to change, and there isn't anything any of us can do about it.

We'll see. In 2007 they adapted to to the prevailing winds...

"As the wheels of FAA rulemaking grind inexorably forward, the nation’s largest union of airline pilots executed a 180-degree turn on mandatory retirement for airline pilots at age 60. In late May, the executive board of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) voted by an 80-percent margin to end its four-decade opposition to any efforts to raise the limit. The union said that in the face of concerted efforts to change the rule by Congress and the FAA, the executive board directed that union resources be committed to protecting pilot interests by exerting ALPA’s influence in any rule change."

Will ALPA prefer to be party to the process once again? Or risk being relegated to outsider obstructionist status? The older guys who tend to make up top union leadership have a vested interest in avoiding additional medical screening for older pilots... especially if it were to get applied under age 65 :eek:

Also the politics are more complicated that just "Dems Love Labor", there's also the age-ism aspect (consider the top Dem leadership for a moment :rolleyes: ). Also the risk of a summer-long travel meltdown right before mid-terms. Would age 67 prevent that? Probably not. Would it appear that politicians are doing some thing, anything? Yes.

That was me. I was a January 99 hire at a major. Going on 26 years in the right seat. To be fair, I didn’t go back when recalled so it’s partly my fault. Still stings a little thinking about it happening again.

Whose management? Your own CEO was on CNBC this morning and said he opposes the change. FAR from a unified front. This is pretty clearly originating from the RAA.

According to Kirby in that interview, 36% of age 64 pilots at United are unavailable to fly due to sick, and LTD. CEOs at the big three need to get very vocal and oppose this proposed age increase. If Kirby’s against it I’m guessing the same is true for the other two.

Do you believe that stat means that 36% of pilots, age 64, have underlying medical conditions that make them unable to meet the requirements of Part 67? Or, do you think it's a reflection of the CBA that gives NO credit for sick leave balances at retirement?

Let's flip it however, say 36% of age 64 pilots are unavailable, that means 64% of that group IS available. A CEO favoring replacing a pilot at the top of the list (who is a top pay scale, with maximum vacation, and all the other "maximum" labor costs for that job classification) with new guy who is at the bottom scale, and with benefits near or at the bottom of the scale can't be surprising to anyone. However, at United's own admission, they don't know where they'll get the manpower needed to execute on the marketing plan.

The get out of my seat crowd has little merit to the argument when there are unfilled Captain vacancy bids. The seats are open, but where are all the eager new guys to jump in?

Thats an anomaly. It isn’t the case at every airline.

The vast majority of the current wave is being driven by airlines hiring aggressively to replace early and age 65 retirements during the covid lull. Raising the age does very little as long as that continues to be the case as projected retirements are a relatively minor influence in the current hiring and movement. Why take on the added long-term costs for what doesn't even amount to a bandaid fix? I find it hard to believe that any CEO of an airline whose attrition is primarily retirement-driven supports this.

One of the things I love about our contract. Can cash out at 100% up to 700 hours of sick time at your current pay rate. I will never save up that much but having a few hundred would be nice.

I would be curious if we have the same issue if people calling out to burn sick time those last two years.

That's exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote that.

If you go by that, then pilots could go on disability at 62.

I expect this to pass in early 2023. It will likely be an R House and Senate.

Correct; our PAC money is not enough to interest pols. There's a lot more money out there.

I saw that on CNBC this AM. I think he knows exactly where pilots stand on an age change and just said that to please the bulk of United pilots.
How much would he reap in training savings if he squeezed another two years out of each pilot?

You know what's so funny about that stat? There was a similar stat of 58 and 59 year olds before they increased retirement age. I thought it might make a difference in passing 65. It didn't. And now 'the big sick' usage years have moved to right before retirement. Again.

All those 64 year old sick pilots will magically get sick at 66. Kirby knows it and was just throwing that out to appear that he's against the change.
I don't believe him. He want through SERE and learned about 'apparent sincerity'.

No, there are a lot of retirements happening at the big 3. Plus they're trying to grow. I don't have the number of retirements for 2022 at United, but it's likely in excess of 400.

I'd like to see that at United, but since we have a lot of pilots who retire with 500+ hours in their sick banks, why would the company allow pilots to cash that out?

I’m not saying they would, it was clearly something we negotiated for. I was just bringing it up in regards to that comment about 37% of age 62+ pilots being out sick. I wonder if they are just trying to burn sick hours before retirement.

"A Lot"? what percentage of pilots retiring at age 65 have a SL balance in excess of 500 hours. That number would be telling. The current United contract is a "use it or lose it" for sick leave and many pilots as they near retirement are having the elective surgeries they've been putting off for a career, and of course not wanting to leave anything on the table. To use "pilots on sick leave" as a metric of reliability for UAL pilots under the current CBA is disingenuous at best. Reporting pilots that start a long term disability claim at age 63 or older would be a far more accurate measure of pilot heath for that age group, and ALPA R&I could easily provide those numbers. Since LTD requires verification of illness by the policy underwriter, there'd be a much lower risk of the numbers being skewed by "creative scheduling".

There was an AA captain in my pad a few years back doing just that his last couple of years. Had it all mapped out to retire with zero hours in his bank. He said he had a vision problem; he just couldn’t see himself going to work…. :D

Come on Thor, you know I don't have a number. Are you saying that you haven't heard of guys who have proudly said that they have a ton of SL when they're about to retire? I assume you're a fairly senior WB CA; ask some of your FOs if they hear that much.

I've had cancer so I understand how LTD works. And I've also listened to senior WB CAs telling me which surgeries they're getting at 64+. Usually hip, shoulder, knee. And many of them have mapped out multiple surgeries in that last year. I completely understand all of that; I could use a couple of elective surgeries that I'll save for when I'm close to retirement. And since we're discussing burning high sick banks, a lot of guys plan on burning 90 hrs/mo until depleted so that delays collecting (the lower dollar) LTD.

I hope we can agree that the high percentage of pilots out on SL will simply shift to the last 1-2 years before any new retirement age.