Why Senior Citizens Should Fly - raising retirement age for pilots - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Workforce, April, 2001 by Todd Raphael

We all talk about passing the workforce torch older generation--the growing numbers of senior citizens in the workplace. If our society is going to really accept that fact, let's start by allowing senior citizens to be in charge of our lives when we are the most vulnerable. Let's let them fly airplanes.

You see, people over 60 aren't allowed to pilot commercial planes. It's a rule that hasn't been updated since 1959.

"It's long overdue, of course," Dallas pilot Bert Yetman tells me. Yetman, 68, is suing the FAA for not letting him and 68 other pilots fly. Each of the pilots has received a "superphysical" from a panel of doctors, and a clean bill of mental and physical health.

I think Yetman's right, and here's why.

A different era. Spokesperson Alison Duquette tells me the FAA has no plans to change the Age 60 Rule. "However, the agency is always open to any new scientific research."

Here's some, Alison: In 1960, the average life expectancy at birth was only 69.7 years. By 1998, life expectancy had risen to 76.7 and 60-year-olds were expected to live another 21 years.

Medical advancements are enabling younger pilots with serious medical problems--from multiple bypasses to alcoholism--to fly planes. Are these people any healthier than the 61-year-old who almost beat me in a half-marathon last month? Heck, John Glenn has been studied more than almost any other human being on earth, and NASA sent him into outer space at 76.

Experience counts. I recently flew from Orange County, Calif. to Cincinnati, and the plane ran into turbulence (that's a scary storm to you and me). Let's think about who I wanted in the cockpit. Some doofus I went to college with a decade ago who's been flying commercial jets for two years? Or a captain my mother's age, who's been through 250 storms worse than this one? Judgment counts, baby, especially when my life is in your wings.

Plenty of tests. To fly a commercial plane, you have to get a physical each year. And then another. You have to conduct a simulator ride. And then another. On top of that, the government occasionally does spot checks, showing up at the check-in line to join you on the flight. If we need more proficiency tests, let's add them. But chronological age shouldn't be one of the criteria.

A labor shortage. You may be thinking, "Is the lack of employees (in this case, pilots) really a good enough reason to compromise safety?" Think again. The lack of employees has been exacerbated by the Age 60 Rule. This forces airlines to lower their standards by more quickly promoting inexperienced pilots to the captain position.

Experts from every continent have expressed at least some support--either written or oral--for raising the age limit. Even the Civil Aviation Medicine Association, which the FAA has licensed to give physicals to pilots, has expressed support for a change. So has the EEOC, AARP, and the National Institutes of Health.

So who in tarnation is left on the side of the Age 60 Rule? You guessed it-the union.

The Air Line Pilots Association, which once favored higher age limits, now doesn't want to tinker with the Age 60 Rule. The group believes that legislation would cramp the opportunities for rapid promotion to captain for its younger members (the median age is 42). In Washington, D.C., the pilots' union shells out a lot of dough. It spent $400,000 lobbying in 1999, and in the 1999-2000 election cycle forked over at least $870,000 in political donations, It wields a lot of power.

The balance of power is going to have to change. After all, we're soon going to have to meld the workforces of two very different generations.

We'll never get there at this rate if we are more comfortable putting our lives in the hands of inexperienced employees who happen to be 30. I'll take a healthy and wise pilot twice that age any day.