House committee votes to raise pilot retirement age to 67

Ian_J said:
It’s not ageism. It’s changing the rules (again) in the middle of the game. In a seniority based system this benefits only the most senior.

With age 65 I will retire at 18% seniority. With the change to age 67 if I still wanted to retire at 65 years old it would be 25% and 1000 numbers junior. That’s a big deal. That difference means I could have been a wide body captain before, but not under the new rule. Never mind the fact for the next three years everyone currently with an airline job is stagnant.
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Just curious, were you at the airlines when age 65 passed in 2007?
 
bike21 said:
Great success!

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Really? Was it though?

I saw (see) this as a battleground issue between the two most entitled generations. Boomers and Gen Z. With the rest of us, the collateral damage of the lost decade, the X and Millennial (Y) stuck inbetween getting hosed yet again.


“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”

-Capt. Jean Luc Picard
 
BobDDuck said:
Yes. It was a great success for everyone who doesn't want to have to work for two more years to achieve the same career they would have had otherwise.
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I know that I’m ’on the wrong side’ of this issue… but I just don’t see how a snapshot of your seniority on your retirement date is the achievement award of your career.

And you never know what your career is going to be like except looking back. Look at our two employers… one merger stomped down by broadway quoting judge. Another one that is in the first stages of the 4723 milestones. We don’t even have a full card in front of us in the bingo game that is life. Or would the analogy be, the card gets swapped out a bunch? Either way….

What really got me thinking about it was one of the aviation themed podcasts I was listening to. At my carrier, it’s gonna be a potential loss of like ~712k of income in todays money over those two years if I chose to stay and fly min sked.

Both sides… National and the Let Experience Fly guys have been very disingenuous through the whole political fight. We’ve all seen the memes for the ‘experience’ crowd… National is running a crazy propaganda campaign on this one. It feels like there were more calls to action than with secondary barriers. Or even single pilot stuff. There was more than enough time to poll the membership and get updated data as to the will of the group.
 
When the boomers signed up, it was 60. It was also 60 when I started in 2007. IIRC, Dec 2007 we got the FOM memo that retirement age was now 65.

And now the want 67. They get the additional 7 yrs as narrowbody or widebody mainline pay. I got 4.5 yrs of that as RJ FO pay. If 67 goes through, we get stagnant seniority and then maybe 2 yrs additional from 65-67 - if you can hold a 1st class medical.



In a seniority system? Yeah, I have a problem with increasing the age to 67.
 
We are far from out of the woods with this. It could still be added to the senate bill later, and even if not, it has to be reconciled with the house bill that does have it in it. I don't think 67 is a big deal to these politicians, so I think they will definitely throw it under the bus either way if they need to.
 
Kingairer said:
We are far from out of the woods with this. It could still be added to the senate bill later, and even if not, it has to be reconciled with the house bill that does have it in it. I don't think 67 is a big deal to these politicians, so I think they will definitely throw it under the bus either way if they need to.
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You’re living a pipe dream. The FAA told legislators to vote it down. Senate committee did. The odds of this being presented again to add on an FAA bill that legislators give little •s for is probably unlikely. FAA doesn’t want to be the first for this or spend money they barely can get to study age 67. ICAO does it then we will get in the US. Just like 65.
 
Whatever the mandatory retirement age, one can do so earlier - depending on financial needs and obligations. I left the workforce at 65, not 67, and lost about 85 bucks a month in so doing. It worked well until the current rate of inflation (which is real at the grocery store and however full cruise ships are) but I could use that now for groceries.

Anyway, it works for me - though things have become tight these days.

Alone with my pups, I traveled in early years and have no desire now, the car is paid off and has only 45K miles on it despite being a 2017, my rent is modest and well-below the norm for a two-bedroom place locally. All of our circumstances are different, and mine might change one day, but it IS possible to find a good life based on personal choice and not government mandate based upon desire and realistic expectation.
 
Bob Ridpath said:
Whatever the mandatory retirement age, one can do so earlier - depending on financial needs and obligations. I left the workforce at 65, not 67, and lost about 85 bucks a month in so doing.
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A big issue with it when dealing with seniority driven careers is that that means you stay lower seniority for longer which can have significant impact on your earnings and quality of life. In ATC for example you bid days off, both your normal “weekend” days and vacation days in seniority order. Right now we have two guys who are on extensions past the mandatory age 56 retirement rule. They have weekends off. They also bid first for vacation days. They’re holding up everyone else.
 
NovemberEcho said:
A big issue with it when dealing with seniority driven careers is that that means you stay lower seniority for longer which can have significant impact on your earnings and quality of life. In ATC for example you bid days off, both your normal “weekend” days and vacation days in seniority order. Right now we have two guys who are on extensions past the mandatory age 56 retirement rule. They have weekends off. They also bid first for vacation days. They’re holding up everyone else.
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I understand. There were a couple guys in my small union shop who tended to screw those less senior to them with regard to holidays snd vacation. Although number 2 in seniority, the dogs didn’t care much about seniority or days of the week so I would trade holiday shifts for others that had family so they could be home. Those of us who worked Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc, made some kick-ass meals in our kitchen and they were the best shifts I remember.
 
tcco94 said:
You’re living a pipe dream. The FAA told legislators to vote it down. Senate committee did. The odds of this being presented again to add on an FAA bill that legislators give little •s for is probably unlikely. FAA doesn’t want to be the first for this or spend money they barely can get to study age 67. ICAO does it then we will get in the US. Just like 65.
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Even with that information the vote went directly on party lines. 14-13, and it already passed in the house and as they merge the two versions we'll see if it survives. It is certainly less likely today than it was yesterday, Im just not ready to declare victory yet.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
When the boomers signed up, it was 60. It was also 60 when I started in 2007. IIRC, Dec 2007 we got the FOM memo that retirement age was now 65.

And now the want 67. They get the additional 7 yrs as narrowbody or widebody mainline pay. I got 4.5 yrs of that as RJ FO pay. If 67 goes through, we get stagnant seniority and then maybe 2 yrs additional from 65-67 - if you can hold a 1st class medical.



In a seniority system? Yeah, I have a problem with increasing the age to 67.
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I kinda get your perspective more than I have before with this explanation, buuuuuuuut......you, even me, anyone in this industry right now with the pay scales where they are at, are making crazy money for much longer periods of time. You are either TOS CA or very close to it, and will be for 20+ more years. I'll make, cumulatively, a lot less than you will at this shop before I retire theoretically at about the same time as you (though I plan to leave well before 65, so I guess even less). But in either of our cases, we will make so much more than a lot of these guys who lived through numerous airlines, bankruptcy, being FE's, being out on the street during furloughs or strikes, and being forced back to the bottom of a new seniority list when their "destination" airline went TU. You talk a lot about this current generation not knowing what a downturn is like, which isn't wrong (I'm one of them based on my DoH). But none of us know what a really bad decade of deregulation + economic chaos + industry restructuring is like. Other than those boomers. I say this because there are two sides to every argument. I'm not in favor of either one, but I acknowledge that there is more than greed behind some folks desire for age 67. And when I say that, I generally don't think 67 is a good thing. I just don't think these people are all "I got mine, time to pull up the ladder" types that folks make them out to be.
 
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Kingairer said:
Even with that information the vote went directly on party lines. 14-13, and it already passed in the house and as they merge the two versions we'll see if it survives. It is certainly less likely today than it was yesterday, Im just not ready to declare victory yet.
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Passed in the house committee (long time ago and not 72 hours post FAA saying don’t pass this)

Because they’re all just voting directly on party lines and this thing has little support as is outside of that. Like I said absolute pipe dream thinking they reverse course of the Senate committee to add this back into the FAA bill. Hell how many votes were proxy today? These legislators have no time and care about the FAA reauthorization with much larger bills at stake and an election in Nov.

It’s dead in the water. ICAO is the only hope if you want age 67.
 
///AMG said:
I kinda get your perspective more than I have before with this explanation, buuuuuuuut......you, even me, anyone in this industry right now with the pay scales where they are at, are making crazy money for much longer periods of time. You are either TOS CA or very close to it, and will be for 20+ more years. I'll make, cumulatively, a lot less than you will at this shop before I retire theoretically at about the same time as you (though I plan to leave well before 65, so I guess even less). But in either of our cases, we will make so much more than a lot of these guys who lived through numerous airlines, bankruptcy, being FE's, being out on the street during furloughs or strikes, and being forced back to the bottom of a new seniority list when their "destination" airline went TU. You talk a lot about this current generation not knowing what a downturn is like, which isn't wrong (I'm one of them based on my DoH). But none of us know what a really bad decade of deregulation + economic chaos + industry restructuring is like. Other than those boomers. I say this because there are two sides to every argument. I'm not in favor of either one, but I acknowledge that there is more than greed behind some folks desire for age 67. And when I say that, I generally don't think 67 is a good thing. I just don't think these people are all "I got mine, time to pull up the ladder" types that folks make them out to be.
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I see your point. But there are so many unknowns. We don’t know if my shop will make it for me to age 65. Anything could happen in the next 20-30 years. Nor do I take these inflated wages as a normal / guaranteed for the next 10-30 yrs. As for a bad decade, I think anyone working the decade of 2000-2010 would qualify in that. To a different degree of course, depending on where they were at the time. The reality is, more than half the seniority list was hired after starting at their first 121 in the 2012-present time. Other than the temporary blip of Covid, there hasn't been real true pain yet.


Age 67 is nothing more than senior farts wanting to get keep their top seniority another 2 yrs and score another 850-1million+.

As for their pay back then, housing (and everything else) was less in cost and much more proportional to their annual salaries versus today. The boomer generation scored in the housing game called the American Dream.


So yeah: NO to age 67
 
True, most of ours live in Gig Harbor. Which is pretty much unobtanium for today's CA. I buy your argument, but I do think there are some qualitative differences between the lost decade, and a couple others that came before. Not to mention that 2000-2008 was pretty hard on a lot of existing guys who were decently high in seniority by then (loss of pension later in career, etc), after having being previously hammered by deregulation, and then the early-mid 1990s. But yes, it is possible that virtual airline doesn't exist in 20 years, or that the pay scales wither away in the next decade. We're about to lose commuter hotels, which albeit a QOL more than a pay thing for me, is also kinda sucky. IL's + that, probably doesn't equal an unreasonably rosy near future anyway.
 
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