Airline Pilots Fighting Age Limit Point to Mature Heroes in Their Midst

To hear Capt. Jack Young tell it, just when you have reached the peak of your abilities flying a jetliner they kick you out of the cockpit.

“When a pilot reaches 60, he has gotten there because he’s healthy and proficient,” said Young, 69, who was forced out by a 30-year-old Federal Aviation Administration rule after a 35-year career.

Although there is mounting pressure for change and heroic veteran pilots have been in the news this year, the FAA sees no reason to alter its rule that commercial pilots and co-pilots must hand over the controls at age 60, or at least get in the back seat as flight engineers.

“It should be optional to continue or retire at 60 or any other age. If a man is physically fit and functionally able and motivated to continue flying, he should be able to do so,” said Young, a former Eastern Airlines pilot who founded the Pilots Rights Assn., nicknamed the “Gray Eagles.”

Young said he hopes to draw on public admiration for veterans such as Al Haynes, 58, the United Airlines captain who landed a jetliner with no hydraulic controls in an Iowa field in July, and David Cronin, 59, the United pilot who landed safely in February (on his second-to-last commercial flight) after a section of the plane’s fuselage blew out.

The FAA cites statistics showing a “significantly higher incidence of incapacitating events” among men 60 and older, said John Leyden, a spokesman in Washington. “That has been the basis (of the rule) for 30 years.”

The agency has never found a way to separate healthy 60-year-olds from those who are showing their age, Leyden said. “Making it 60 may not be the best way to go, but we don’t know of any better way.”

The rule, in effect since March 15, 1960, has been challenged repeatedly at the FAA and in the courts. Numerous pilots have sought exemption, but all have lost--most recently in May, when a request from 24 pilots was turned down.

The FAA spokesman noted that while a number of older pilots are against the age limit, others--and their union, the Air Line Pilots Assn.--support it.

“We’re opposed to changing the rule,” said Dick Stone, 57, a Delta captain and the union’s executive chairman for aeromedical resources. Health and safety aside, he said, the age limit “ensures promotion for younger pilots. If we changed the age to an older age, it would stall the careers of some pilots.”

Each side can cite studies supporting its point, but the FAA said in May that a pilot’s performance probably starts diminishing after he is 50, and that “the experience of pilots age 60 and over does not outweigh the danger they present from sudden incapacitation or otherwise diminished mental or physical performance.”

The FAA said it is willing to look at any scientific evidence that will help find “a way to discriminate between those who contribute to the adverse trend of increasing accidents (involving older pilots) and those who do not.”

“Age, in and of itself, should not be the criterion,” said Dr. Herbert Karp, a professor of medicine and neurology at Atlanta’s Emory University and medical director at the Wesley Woods Geriatric Hospital. “We know that as we get older, there are certain physiological changes that do occur.

“But there’s a great variability in the occurrence of these changes.”

Mandatory retirement based on age has “very little justification,” and even if there were such a cutoff, 60 may be 10 years too young, he said. “We can’t say, but it would be likely to be in the seventh decade.”

“We really think of problems emerging at 75 and above,” said Dr. Robert N. Butler, Brookdale professor of Geriatrics at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center. “There is an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease in the late 50s and 60s, but there’s no sort of arbitrary jump at a magical age called 60.”

Besides, Butler said, in a jetliner there is always at least one other crew member who can fly the plane if the pilot suffers a heart attack. And, the Age 60 Rule is applied only to commercial airline pilots. Nothing says a 100-year-old can’t fly a Cessna anywhere.

“There are people over 60 flying airplanes all the time,” he said. “It’s only passenger carriers that they haven’t been flying.”

Butler, a former director of the National Institute on Aging, once proposed letting some over-60 pilots continue to fly as a test program. The FAA refused. “We do need experienced pilots, and it’s a shame they haven’t gotten to test it.”

Meanwhile, about 30 pilots who are fighting the rule have filed an appeal in the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, which is expected to hear the case sometime next year.