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the CAB Economic Regulations, which may, pursuant to CAB exemption, be heavy, multi-engine airline-type aircraft; in such circumstances, this type of flying would differ from their pre-retirement employment in only one principal respect, namely that it would not be conducted within the safeguards of the airline operating requirements prescribed by Part 121; and

4.  Finally, of course, they may function freely as pilots in the common airspace as part of general aviation, where they may, in contrast to their former airline flying, go aloft alone, and in aircraft far less safely equipped and manned than those in which they formerly served.

Even the most cursory analysis of the FAA position quickly suggest that the true basis for this FAA rule lies elsewhere than in a real concern for safety aloft.  How, otherwise, can it be explained that, though Congress expressed & charged FAA with the responsibility to insure the safe use of the common airspace by all its occupants, airline pilots who have attained age 60, as unsafe for use of the airspace, but unsafe only when they are supported by the best elements of fail-safe airline operations.  When those supporting fail-safe operating elements are removed, so, apparently is the risk, in FAA's view, and use of the airspace then becomes generally available to these pilots.  The logic defies comprehension.

B.  Principles governing the application of physical standards for airmen.

Under the predecessor to the Federal Aviation Act, it was the