Carl Spackler

I can appreciate your need to change the subject, so let me try again:

How is a union supposed to change a congressional mandate?

Carl

dundem

Paladin,
I would not doubt for a second that you are still healthy and still great at your job. However, statistically, there will be less of you that meet both of those criteria. For every year past 60, a reducing number will continue to be healthy enough to fly safely and continue to be great at their jobs. BTW, good job on staying married to the same woman. It’s nice to know that some people can still honor their word.
I am now on my third job outside of the U.S. and I remember flying with a 76 yrs old instructor while converting my FAA license to that of the local CAA. This man was a legend- he’d been for decades and he was now the owner of the flight school and D.E. for the CAA. He did at least some of the training/checking for most of the pilots in that country. At 76 years old he was still able to fly circles around the vast majority pilots of any age. What’s the point of this story? He’s an exception. The rules should not be made for the exceptional amongst us.

To some other posters,
I hate to break it to those of you who try to make this about entitlement or economic reasons, but I have no sense of entitlement. I have been at one company that closed down and faced furlough from another in the past 5 years alone and I am relatively new to this industry. Each time, I picked myself up and moved on. I didn’t sit on my butt feeling sorry for myself, blindly hoping that something great would happen. I was proactive and looked again around the world for a job. For the record, I hope to return to the U.S. to fly in the years to come. In the meantime, I will not blame those that stay past 60 for my current situation; there’s no point. I will continue to make the best of the situation: as they say, “when life gives you lemons…” I like lemonade very much.
Age 65 happened, it had a negative impact on my career prospects; I got over it years ago. The fact that I am over it will not stop me from voicing my opinions on the subject. If you feel that this thread is a waste of space/bandwidth, then by all means feel free to peruse the many other threads available on this board or on another site.

7576FO

I haven't been very vocal about the age 65 retirement change. In the last 4 months i've flown with 6 over age 60 pilots. Only 1 of the 6 had a "right way" attitude. The rest simply did things their own way, and it was then that I realized that if they screw up, it's called retirement (forced retirement) while for me, it's FAA violation, time off, suspension, time off without pay, termination, termination awaiting grievance, fired!
They get their full retirement. If i'm fired, I only get whats accumulated so far in my A fund, no calculation, no best 5 of last 10, no multiplier.
I fly for American Airlines.

atp409

Sorry Denny, Yes they will be highest paid, but at a lower longevity. So temporarily, the highest dues collected would be lower than say the dues collected from a Captain with less seniority. Look at the CAL list and you will see what I mean. There would be Captains who had not yet topped out.

Pineapple Guy

I assume APA has something equivalent to what ALPA calls "Professional Standards" committee? Give them a call; we don't need lone rangers out there running things their way, regardless of age...

Scoop

Paladin,

I'm sure what you say is true. I am sure that many Pilots can meet standards into their 70's - some probably should retire at 50. My heartburn with this issue is the way it was changed. By raising the age 5 years overnight some people received an incredible windfall and otherw were totally screwed.

What about the guys who turned 60 two months before the law was change? Sorry, but the arbitrary hand of bureaucracy has spoken and you lose. Now what about the guy who turned 60 two months after the rule was changed - even though he had the benefit of guys ahead of him retiring at 60 he gets an extra 5 years at the highest seniority he will ever hold - super windfall!

Not that we as Pilots have a direct say in legislation but it would have been nice to see the age raised six months a year or something similar. This would have slowly raised the age to 65 and yet no one individual would have had more than a six month bonus over guys older than them. No junior guys would have been delayed more than 6 months by guys immediately senior to them.

Arguing individual pilot skills of the 60-65 is a waste of time for guys on both sides. Looking at a standard bell curve you can see some guys would be fine and others, not so much. Pretty much the same thing as for guys at 55. I will say this; however, the more you raise the age the more the whole "curve" moves in the negative direction.

Scoop

PS - Is Paladin a reference to "Have gun - Will travel."

Ottopilot

Yes, thank you. We changed from 60 to 65 to be like the rest of the world. British Air went from 55 to 65! We are finally becoming more ICAO in many ways.

Denny Crane

So what you are telling me is that, at Continental, you can be a widebody captain with 12 years. (Because we are talking about the most senior positions at an airline) That's pretty good! I don't have access to a Continental senority list but I know for a fact at Delta that you are extremely lucky nowadays to be in the left seat of a narrowbody at 12 years let alone a widebody. I checked American, Continental, United, and Delta and all their pay scales top out at 12 years longevity. It doesn't matter if you are 50 or 60+.

Denny

mshunter

Well if you don't like my thinking, and refuse to debate it with me, I can no longer continue. But in closing, I guess you don't consider lobbying into my argument.

contrails

You do realize they do quite a bit of lobbying, don't you?