You bet I can. When it's a safety-related decision, age plays a huge factor in it. Take a look at senior drivers.
Ummm... I'm sorry. Are you an M.D. with a Ph.D. in age behavioral sciences? Are you on the FAA payroll to determine the risk factors behind an age 65 increase? No?
Then, no, you can't. Period. Get it through your skull, it's NOT your call to make. NO INDIVIDUAL PERSON has the right to limit anyone else based on their own OPINION. That's why we have a legal system in place that, thank God, prevents people from indiscriminately setting up their own laws.
I disagree.
But if you really wanna go down that road, notice that there is no such thing as United White College Fund or White Pilots Organization. Why is it that Mo from South Central can get access to United Negro College Fund and my kids can't? Is that not discrimination too? This argument really doesn't hold.
The argument ABSOLUTELY holds.
And you're absolutely right, the examples above are reverse discrimination and I've been preaching against EXATLY those types of discrimination for a long time. I'm all for the abolition of the EEOC; its time has come and gone.
Level the playing field, let everyone obtain and keep their job based on merit. Period. Age, gender, race, religious belief, ANY discrimination on ANY of these basis is intolerable.
I agree to an extent. I'll agree with you that not all people age the same, and you have to draw a standard.
Agreed. Its called a medical exam and testing standards. If they can't pass the standard, they can't continue to fly. Safety problem solved.
How is this new proposed rule not discriminatory either? It still doesn't meet your objective of letting people leave, it merely states that you can truck it in the airlines for 5 more years as long as there's someone there with you under 60. If that's not discriminatory, I don't know what is.
I agree it's not a perfect solution, but it's better than the system currently in place.
One thing at a time...
As for the private jets, I've done the job, and I've flown in and out ASE, TEX, SUN and all those fun mountain airports. Here's the primary difference between the two jobs:
As an airplane owner, I can hire you to fly me. It is my own prerogative if I want to hire a 65 year old. Private transportation. Airlines are public transportation, and as such, subject to different rules. I don't want my kids flown by people over 60, especially if there's no reason to.
Non-sequitur, sir. Your logic is faulty.
Your previous post SPECIFICALLY said that the airline guys "could go fly a private jet", yet NOW you're saying that the private jets can exclude the guys flying over 60 as well.
By YOUR logic, you just locked them out of the VERY FLYING that your last post sought for them.
Pick one.
Are you saying that the old guy in the patterned environment can't handle change? Oh my... how come? Too much new information to learn? Are you alluding to the fact that if an emergency hits, the old guy will get a heart attack because he's flown 20+ years accident-free? Come on man, I like your other arguments on regionals board, but this one is a little weak.
No, I'm not saying that at all. I never spoke those words.
What I DID say was that you question the safety of a pilot at a 121 airline but not flying a corporate jet in MORE CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTS?
With your experience you can't possibly tell me that shooting a Cat IIIc autoland in a 767 in 0/0 weather is harder than trying to hand-fly an old 20- series Lear with a POS autopilot into a 4000 foot strip with a 25 kt. crosswind? Yet THIS is where you submit the guys that, by YOUR argument, have degraded skills should go?
YOU are the one suggesting their skills are degraded, not me. I'm simply asking you WHY you would send a pilot who, in YOUR opinion, has degraded skills, into a MORE CHALLENGING environment?
Like I said, as for Gulfstream passengers, they are the ones hiring the old crew. If it's a charter company, and the people in the back get scared, one call, and the old crew is out... It's a risk that the Gulfstream owners or pax take BECAUSE THEY CHOOSE TO. Airline passengers don't have that choice. We all have to rely on the old guy to ground himself and retire if he doesn't feel like he can hack it anymore. Will he? I doubt it. Not the ones I've run into. They still claim they're able for that widebody left seat, but are unable to copy down a clearance and have to have it read to them 3-4 times before they finally get it.
I've never seen a guy have to copy a clearance 3-4 times, even one I flew with last month who was 1 week from age 60 mandatory retirement. He was a VERY capable aviator, sharp as a tack, and it reminded me how much BULLSH*T it was he was being forced out.
I'm certain there are a few guys out there flying at 55 or even younger that shouldn't be there either, but the checks and balances lies with the medical examinations and Proficiency Checks and Line Checks. THAT is what we SHOULD be relying on, not necessarily someone's self-certification of their own physical condition, and certainly not an arbitrary number that has no basis in fact or research, but simply "it's done OK so far"...
