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MEMORANDUM

TO: AGE 60 COMMITEE
FROM: H.A. LEVY
RE: MEETING ON 4/8/68 WITH CHAS. BILLINGS IN COLUMBUS, OHIO
DATE: APRIL 10, 1968

Mike Gitt and I visited with Charles Billings, M.D., Associate Professor of Aerospace Medicine and Director of the Aviation Medicine Research Laboratory, Ohio State University, in Columbus on Monday evening, April 8, 1968. Dr. Billings, an authorized FAA Medical Examiner, holds a commercial license with instrument rating and is also rated on multi-engine equipment.
We had the following purposes in requesting this  meeting:
1. To ascertain Dr. Billings' views concerning the medical basis for the age 60 rule;
2. To ascertain his views concerning the operational validity of the rule; and
3. To ascertain whether, in his view, a program or study could now be designed to test the validity of the rule, and, if so, what the content of that study or program should be.

Early in the meeting, Dr. Billings gave us a detailed statement of his views concerning relevant medical factors. He indicated that the problem of medical or physical incapacitation has, in his view, three principal subdivisions:

A. Sudden incapacitation of the type often associated with heart attacks or strokes.
In this area, the unresolved operational and medical issues are these:
1. On three man crew airplanes, if we suddently remove the Captain's thirty-odd years of experience from the available reservoir of pilot experience and ability on that flight deck, will the remaining available experience and ability always be sufficient to complete the flight safely? Dr. Billings tends to answer this question in the negative, having in mind current levels of training and experience of first and second officers.

2. Dr. Billings believes that the same question and answer as in No. 1 above are at least equally relevant and applicable to two man crew airplanes.

3. To the question whether hardware on the flight deck is sufficiently sophisticated to prevent interference by an incapacitated, probably unconscious pilot, Dr. Billings would respond that we are closer to an answer to this problem than we are to some of the others, and that an operational study might lead to the conclusion that such hardware is sufficient.

4. Regarding the medical predictability of such occurrences, Dr. Billings believes that although we've had some refinements in medical techniques in the last 7 or 8 years, such as development of the rheoencephelogram, we still remain unable at this time to predict with reliability the onset of such incapacitation in a given individual.

Dr. Billings next pointed out that the sudden and obvious kind of incapacitation was not the only type of incapacitation normally associated with aging which ought, in his view, to be considered as relevant to the age 60 rule. He believes that there are two other kinds of disabling consequences of aging to which the age 60 rule may be a relevant response:

B. Chronic or insidious incapacitation normally resulting from