Still feels like corner cutting to get to 67. I don’t use corner cutting logic too often. Doesn’t apply to
the gov of course. Purely political and nothing is logic based.

 

Corner cutting? A study would take a while.

My personal take is that government should not infringe unnecessarily on our liberties, and that includes livelihood. I also suspect but don't know that 65 is to low... which is why I'm in favor of a robust study, without any undue delay. Who knows? They might lower the age.

But if ICAO does it, we almost certainly will follow immediately. Apparently the administration is in favor, and they have votes to pass a minor bill, or attach it to something else (if you think the dems would filibuster over THAT of all things, you're smoking crack rolled up in your ALPA magazine).

 

Undue delay? Just let AI do everything in one hour and accept the results. LTD to age comparison? Sudden incapacitation rates for 121 pilots, or ATPs in general? I think it has to be a general population study. A pilot with a migraine will land an airplane if his career depended on it. The average citizen would curl up into a ball on the floor with a tension head ache.

general population studies make sense for best results.

 

That last paragraph is pure comedy gold. Not even close. Excerpt from report written in 2021. Feel free to look elsewhere if it’s not palatable. I can’t find anything that backs your opinion.


“Remarkably, a high-income person in the U.S. was more likely to report financial barriers than a low-income person in nearly all the other countries surveyed: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K.
Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia were the top performers overall. In the middle of the pack were the U.K., Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and France. Switzerland and Canada ranked lower than those countries, although both still performed much better than the U.S.”

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/pre...countries-many

 

I didn't say we had access to cheaper healthcare.

We (upper middle class USA) smoke less and exercise more than most (not all) foreign populations, and we can afford healthcare when we need it.

You haven't worked much overseas, but they smoke a lot in many places.

 

I don’t know how to tell you this Rick - but you’re just flat out wrong. The data doesn’t back up what you’re saying and neither does my experience. We’re both talking about the same thing I assume ? First world western democracies right ? Use the list in the attached article for a starting point. A forty year old Air France pilot isn’t sitting in a smoky bar on the Marseilles wharf huffing cigarettes.

To your last point - I’ve lived in four of them, and I don’t mean living and working out of a U.S. base with a PX. That's not the same thing. You’re in a bubble.

 

Pilots are the ones who routinely have to get "measured" via 2 FAA physicals per year. You have many older Americans who don't go to the doctor or get screened ever until they get sick. For example, you want to measure colon cancer rates among people who regularly get colonoscopy vs. those who never get screened, and you'll get substantially different results.

This. At my old gig, the "controlled rest" were regulated and spelled out in the manual. If I remember correctly, it was no more than 45 minutes of actual nap, followed by 15 minutes for you to fully wake up, and not within an hour of landing. Using controlled rest procedures to augment or add additional duty time was expressly prohibited by regulation.

At my old operation, our duty limits were strictly based on being acclimated vs. non-acclimated and whether or not we were augmented. Using controlled rest to avoid being augmented was expressly prohibited in the FOM.

 

It’s completely asinine that we don’t utilize controlled rest in the U.S. Part 121 world.

 

I don’t see a way to extend the age (scientifically that is) that wouldn’t require extensive cognitive screening at every medical. Our current exam is a joke. Going in and doing and hours long cog exam (which would probably more accurately simulated the rigors of an Atlantic crossing on the back side of the clock) for ever medical with your livelihood depending on it sounds awful. Personally I think the rules we have now are a good trade off, but those gunning for a few more shekels aren’t really concerned with the impact their greed will have on the pilot group as a whole.

 

Wrong. The cognitive screening is already extensive. It is a test of how well you’ve selected the easiest physician to give cash to who will sign a piece of paper. Oh… and how well you remember an eye chart that has been the same since you were born. DEFPOTEC, anyone? Cog screening done.