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REPORT OF ASSOCIATION'S SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON COMPULSORY RETIREMENT TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The Special Committee on Compulsory Retirement is pleased to report to the Board of Directors at this time concerning its objective and activities. This Committee was created early in 1968 to seek ways to effectuate the Policy of the Board of Directors adopted in 1950, opposing mandatory retirement for airline pilots of any age. As you know, that policy reads as follows:

"The Association strongly opposes any air line,Government agency, or person arbitrarily setting a retirement age. A pilot of any age should be permitted to continue to perform the duties of the airline pilot so long as he is able to meet the established standards for the scheduled airline pilot."

As the first order of business, the Committee had to confront Section 121.383 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, the FAA's compulsory age 60 retirement rule for airline pilots. As you know, this rule is directed to air carriers and it states:

"No certificate holder may use the services of any person as a pilot on an airplane engaged in operations under this part if that person has reached his 60th birthday. No person may serve as a pilot on an airplane engaged in operations under this part if that person has reached his 60th birthday."

We quickly recognized that the task of obtaining some relief against the FAA rule would not be a simple one. Established in 1959 by the first administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency, General Elwood P. Quesada, the Rule was upheld in litigation brought in 1959 and 1960 by the Association in the Federal Courts, where it was held that the Administrator had the power to take such action against the careers of airline pilots as an exercise of his special expertise in matters of air safety.

Since the 1959-1960 litigation, the Rule has become firmly entrenched. By the time the Association's Special Committee was created in 1968 to focus on this matter, it was well recognized throughout the industry that FAA planned