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this new legislation. But we are convinced that the rules of morality don't change simply because the government is involved, nor is there any good reason why airline pilots should be the only job category excluded from the protection of a civil rights law.

For all these reasons, because we felt and still feel that the success of the Committee will produce dividends in which every airline pilot will share, we attacked our task with vigor and enthusiasm. We decided that in order to be effective, we had to have a many-sided approach involving action pointed toward FAA, the carriers, Congress, other organizations operating in the air transportation industry, and indeed pointed toward our own membership. We recognized that there are those members of the Association who understandably seek to progress as quickly as possible on the flight deck, and who may view the resistance of the most senior pilots to compulsory retirement as an obstacle to that progress. While this is a fully understandable reaction, its only defect is that it loses sight of the other elements of this Committee's program to which I have previously referred -- the elements which bear very directly on the security of every airline pilot of any age. As we began our program of action, we hoped we were getting our message across to skeptical members in our own group, since, in the course of our efforts against FAA and others, we couldn't possibly be effective unless we were speaking with a single voice for a unified Association.

In March, 1968, we petitioned FAA for a complete and thorough re-evaluation of the compulsory retirement rule, in view of the many developments which had taken place in the industry since 1959 when the rule was first published. We cited the obsolete reference sources relied on by the Administrator as support for the rule in 1959, we cited the development of cross-qualification of crew members and of the fail safe crew; we cited the willingness of older airline pilots to accept more frequent physical examinations; we cited new national conscience and morality on the subject of age under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which,