Older US pilots not ready to have wings clipped

Washington: Jack Norman has interviewed for a job with Air India and has sent applications to corporate jet companies. Neither option pays nearly as well as his senior position at Continental. Fortunately, his children are out of college.
”It all boils down to being told you can’t [work] anymore for no other reason than a birthday,” he said. ”I view myself at the top of my game.”
Norman wants to keep flying for his airline, but only an act of Congress can keep him in the cockpit.
Like thousands of his colleagues, Norman, a commercial airline pilot, is about to be forced out of the industry by a decades-old rule that says commercial pilots must retire when they turn 60. Norman has five months to go before he gets his marching orders from Continental Airlines, where he flies Boeing 777s around the globe out of Newark Liberty International Airport.
”Any way you slice it, we are being discriminated against,” said Norman, a 59-year-old Bethlehem resident, as he trekked across Capitol Hill on a trip here last week to lobby lawmakers to change the rule. ”It is about fairness.”
For years, older pilots have pushed to change the rules only to watch legislation fall agonizingly short in Congress.
This year could be different. The International Civil Aviation Organization — the international regulator for the industry — upped its age limit for captains to 65 last year, the Federal Aviation Administration came out in favor of an age change and the Air Line Pilots Association followed suit.
Momentum is on the pilots’ side: Measures to change the rule are moving through Congress with broad bipartisan support. But the process is slow and time, for some, is running out — 200 pilots a month turn 60.
The FAA issued the age 60 rule in 1959 out of what it said were safety concerns after a labor dispute between American Airlines and its older pilots. For decades, challenges to the rule were swept aside by the courts.
”We really hadn’t seen any evidence that changing the rule would enhance safety,” FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette said Friday.
But with increasing support for a new age limit in recent years, pressure has mounted on Congress and the FAA to act.
”The opposition has melted away,” said 58-year-old Paul Emens, president of the Airline Pilots Against Age Discrimination, who has been fighting the issue for years, just as his father did before him.
In January, a few months after the International Civil Aviation Organization upped its retirement age, the head of the FAA announced its intention to follow suit through a rule-making change that would take at least a couple of years to complete. Four months later, the Air Line Pilots Association, which had long opposed the move, came out in favor.
One group that remains opposed is the union for American Airlines’ 12,000 pilots, the Allied Pilots Association. Gregg Overman, association spokesman, said internal polls show that American Airlines pilots are against the change by a 7-to-1 margin. Upping the age limit to 65, he said, is as arbitrary as 60.
23/09/07 Josh Drobnyk/Allentown Morning Call, US