PilotJ3

The problem is that the airlines won’t be proactive to bring manning back to the way it used to be.

They will just slow or stop hiring at the first hiccup.

Now if the airlines promises with heavy financial burden if they don’t, that the hiring will continue and stabilize the situation. Then I won’t be opposed…

Theres too much fake money right now going around. Once the bubble explodes, and people can’t pay their credit cards, loans, etc…things will be different.

I can see a slow down in the airline industry and I’m honestly worried.

theUpsideDown

Jeesh that's a solid point.

I still dont think u raise it but good points.

studentpilot

Age limits for pilots is discrimination. Whoever said that is correct. But discrimination is legal and justified in many cases. The military discriminates on age and physical abilities. Makes sense. Law enforcement discriminates similarly. Makes sense. To be president you have to be at least 35 years old. Makes sense. To be an airline Captain with an unrestricted ATP you have to be 23 years old. Makes sense.

And if you ask anyone who’s impartial, setting a max age to be an airline pilot also makes sense.

Not all, but many (if not most) of the near-65 guys I’ve flown with have lost their edge. They don’t realize it, but they have. If they hadn’t been flying and training in the same operation for 30 years, they’d be lost. If it’s anything like the last 64 year old I flew with, they were lost anyways.

Yes, an age limit to get these guys out of the cockpit when they’re past their prime isn’t a scalpel, it’s a hammer. There will be some collateral damage in the form of a few really sharp guys having to retire a couple of years earlier than they need to. But that hammer is the best we have. The alternative is to let the FAA decide, via whatever hare-brained idea they come up with, who is or isn’t past the threshold of cognitive and health decline. And that’s a genie we should not let out of the bottle.

I might not want to retire when I get to 65, but I’m happy to do so if it means we’re keeping sharp guys in the cockpit when I’m in the back of the airplane with my family, riding on my retirement passes. And I’m happy to leave at 65 if it means the FAA doesn’t have an additional mechanism to regularly jeopardize the livelihoods of the 16,000 professionals I’m proud to call my colleagues.

All that said, if you’re going to discriminate by age, like I think we should, there needs to be a damn good reason. Safety is a justified reason. Concerns about slowing career progression for younger people is not a justifiable reason to apply age discrimination. Those who oppose raising/removing the age limit because it will affect their career progression are just as selfish as the guys wanting to raise it for their own personal benefit.

The conversation around Age 65 should be entirely one of safety.

gloopy

Age 65 happened just as we were entering a recession as well.

DL/NWA got lucky with the timing of their merger and only had to stop hiring for over half a decade (except a couple classes right in the middle). UAL wasn't so lucky; age 65 going into a recession directly resulted in another round of furloughs just as the pilots from the previous furlough had been called back. Many got the axe the second time around because of it.

Now obviously that could never happen now, or ever again, because real estate, the stock market and everything else only goes up and its a hair brained conspiracy theory to suggest otherwise. Present performance is a guarantee of future results. Everyone knows that.

dragon

I've flown with folks near 60 and found some were really sharp and had others that were definitely NOT.

Saying that, I don't know if we can set an arbitrary date when all pilots are over the hill. Perhaps the medical could include something for those over 60 to measure fitness to remain at a control seat.

nene

My golfing buddy (who doubles as a jaded UAL pilot) would claim the second round of UAL furloughs were purely to "pretty up" the company by parking older 737's so that they could more easily merge with CAL.

Whoopsmybad

Absolutely not. Having the FAA require us to jump through more undefined hoops? Sounds like an awful way to die

gloopy

I don't know about that haha.

I doubt the DoT, shareholders or anyone else for that matter would have nixed the deal over some short timer 737-300's but who knows. Stopping pilot attrition for half a decade on the other hand absolutely contributed.

dragon

I too cringe at that idea but we can't just draw a line in the sand based on age, I believe the EU has already changed it and hear it is already a done deal here.

Crown

synergy. Circle back. Empower. Reinvent the wheel. Level up.