Says Limit Forces Experienced Pilots Out Of Cockpit

The newly-created Senior Pilots Coalition (SPC), a group of more than 300 pilots seeking to end alleged age discrimination at US airlines, is supporting a legal action forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to review the "Age 60" Rule.

The group alleges US airlines will lose the services of an estimated 5,000 of the nation's most experienced pilots -- many of them Vietnam War and Gulf War I Veterans -- if the FAA doesn't rethink the ruling to require retirement at Age 60 by commercial airline pilots.

The three pilots -- Lewis J. Tetlow, of Bedford, NH, Richard C. Morgan of Charlottesville, VA., and Joseph G. LoVecchio, Lancaster, PA -- are captains for US Airways and will be turning 60 within the next 10 months. They are asking the court to direct FAA Administrator Marion Blakey "to issue a decision on each respondents pending request for an exemption from a regulation forbidding him from flying as a pilot for his employer after his sixtieth birthday."

Their proceeding demands immediate action by Blakey to overturn the "Age 60 Rule" imposed in 1959.

The Senior Pilots Coalition contends: (1) Scientific Evidence was not the basis for the "Age 60 Rule" and it was never about the age and health of pilots; (2) Americans now live considerably longer and are significantly healthier than they were in 1959; (3) airline pilots, particularly those who have undergone military training, are an extraordinarily fit group, particularly when compared to the rest of the population; and (4) there is no known case on the record of an age related in- air incident or accident attributed to the age of a pilot.

President of the SPC Tetlow said: "The 'Age 60 Rule' is an open-and-shut example of age-based discrimination of the worst and most blatant kind. Trust me when I say that these experienced and well-seasoned professionals are not the pilots that Americans want to see given their walking papers."

Tetlow continues: "I am confident most Americans who fly for business or personal reasons would be outraged to learn that foreign commercial air carriers are permitted to fly within the United States with pilots over the age of 60. This is simply intolerable. US airline pilots are unceremoniously given the boot at age 60; while our airspace remains completely open to non-US commercial airline pilots over the age of 60."

"On Friday, March 23, 2007, Petitioners Tetlow and Morgan (and others) met with the Deputy Associate Administrator and other ranking officials of Respondent FAA. The FAA's Deputy Associate Administrator informed them (1) that in the usual course of business waiver applications are acted on within 120 days of receipt; (2) changes to ['the Age 60 Rule'] are under consideration; (3) no action on waiver applications would be taken 'piecemeal' because the regulation may be changed; and (4) it would be September before the FAA is likely to finish its internal consideration of changes to [the 'Age 60 Rule'] and months thereafter before a rule change, if any, would occur."

The SPC was founded in February 2007, the fast-growing Senior Pilots Coalition already has more than 300 members from the across the United States. SPC is a national pilot organization dedicated to ending age discrimination in the US commercial airline industry.

FMI: www.seniorpilotscoalition.org, www.faa.gov