Yet I’d wager most Asians would feel more safe flying a US airline then a Asian airline lol

 

I knew a pilot once in the 2000's that fasted for weeks and lost some lbs to make the BMI cutoff for JALWAYS interview. When he took the physical, they said, BMI ok but blood work off, no hire. When he went home and asked his doc about the bloodwork, doc said, classic symptoms of fasting!!!

 

If I run into Ho Lee Fuk, Wi Tu Low or Bing dang Ow I’ll be sure to ask them how tough their medical is! I’m gonna lower your 75% to maybe 20-25%. US Airlines have a lot of active (Reserve) and former military pilots that go thru rigorous class 1’s yearly. Those physicals sometimes take 2 days to complete not to mention eye dilation that exposes any potential vision issues, thorough blood work/Urinalysis and various other “Moon Riverrrrrrr!! procedures.

 

So silly

Yet most of their pilots can’t hand fly or work a issue outside of a checklist to save their lives

It’s like how in the third world having polyester gold bars = professional, actually being able to fly the plane is a distant third place lol

Priorities, some get it, some don’t

 

You've gone to stage 3, bargaining. When I opposed 65, my stage 3 was asking for a phased in approach where the retirement age moved up by 3-6 months every year. I wrote to a ton of politicians asking them to consider doing so for safety reasons. It didn't happen and neither will stricter medical standards.

You may want to fully think out your bargaining ideas before posting. Your suggestion would result in much higher monthly LTD premiums for those that pass their physicals.

I fully support a stricter medical. I have LTD coverage, so that sounds awesome to me. I'd like to collect LTD until retirement age.

 

It’s not bargaining, just a question. This is political and will either happen or not regardless of what we think. In Washington, kicking the can down the road to another election cycle is always the best solution. Increasing the age will do nothing to address the pilot shortage in the long term. Many of those in favor have used other countries as examples when raising to age 65, 67 now, and then something new next time. I’m just asking if they’re also willing to accept their medical standards as well.

 

What was the initial reason for the age 60 anyway? One explanation I heard was airline execs didn’t want someone sitting at the top of the pay band until they were 80ish. Back then You couldn’t swing a dead cat and not hit an airline pilot so they forced the person at the top out and brought in someone at the bottom that was making a tenth of what the older person was. Makes perfect sense from a purely economic view. But what about all that experience walking out the door?

I believe it was Scott Kirby that said most of his older pilots that were close to retirement were out on sick leave. My question to Kirby would be what is your policy for being paid out for sick leave when someone retires? Is it possible they are taking the sick leave to keep from losing it? That would be my guess.

if they raise the age to 67 or remove it completely I would be ok with a cognitive test at 65 and older. But now that I think of it, I know some 30 year olds that would be questionable if they could pass it.

Haven’t we recently (in the last 2 years) had several pilots in their 50s die inflight? Prior to 2021 how often did a pilot die at the controls?

Full disclosure: I recently was forced out because of age 65. I didn’t want to go as I loved my job. I’m in excellent health and have no issues and I take no prescription drugs. I would have stayed if I could have. I was ready to go financially but not mentally.

 

I completely agree with you but we are rapidly heading to the same place in the US.

 

Close. Back in the late 50's the CEO of AA was in a labor dispute with his pilots and the ringleaders were the senior CA's (ie old guys). So he leveraged his political connections (from his wartime service to the USG IIRC) to get congress to pass the age 60 law to get rid of his in-house trouble-makers.

That's not old wives tale, it's readily verifiable fact. So the original age 60 had no basis in science or data of any sort. It was 100% pure union-busting.

IMO, given obvious advances in medicine, health, and lifestyle by 2007 the age 60 limit was due to be increased... if you argued that there was any safety basis for age 60 in the first place, you had to accept that the basis for that had changed over time.

The only question is how old is new age 60? 63? 65? 67? 70? That's a little hard to pin down precisely since age 60 had no scientific basis to begin with.

In the end it will probably come full circle right back to where it started: politics.

I suspect Kirby isn't very wrong. Age 67 would have minimal impact on young pilots, but some older guys would get paid longer via LTD.

But LTD depends on contract language... I know at least a couple which cap that at age 65 specifically, and I'd bet that applies to most, unless somebody's NC was really thinking ahead.

Very slippery slope. You cannot just do that for age 65+ arbitrarily, you'd lose the lawsuit on age discrimination... kind of like if you instituted cog tests only for female hispanic pilots. Federal law is very similar.

So you'd have to do some science which would take years, and the science might (probably would) dictate cog tests for younger pilots too.

It's been happening every year since the late 90's. I wasn't paying attention before that.

 

Rick, seems kind of odd that you could force someone out of a job because of age but if you ask for cognitive tests at a certain age it would be a “slippery slope” due to age discrimination? Isn’t the age 65 rule age discrimination in itself? Am I missing something here?