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age and any specific accidents or incidents. Should an exemption be granted, petitioner offers to submit to a physical exam every thirty days or any other special requirement the FAA deems appropriate.

In adopting the age 60 rule in 1959, the FAA recognized that not all persons who reached that age would present the same risk to the safety of the operations affected. The FAA stated that "any attempt to be selective in predicting which individuals are likely to suffer an incapacitating attack would be futile under the circumstances and would not be medically sound". The fact that petitioner is, right up to his 60th birthday and even after that event, capable of qualifying for a first-class medical certificate is not persuasive, since as stated in the preamble to the age 60 rule "in the case of one large group under medical supervision over an extended period, some 85% of the persons who had a heart attack for the first time had the attack within six months to a year after a thorough medical examination had found the individual in a condition normal to his age and without any evidence to suggest the imminence of such an attack". Nor is the FAA convinced at this time that even a monthly physical examination would provide an adequate safeguard for predicting the continued physical health of persons in the over 60 age bracket.

The facts presented in the instant case are substantially the same as those submitted by Attorney Madole on behalf of another airline pilot in the spring of this year (See Denial of Exemption No. 673, Docket 8007). While the petition on behalf of Captain Furlow does not, as did the earlier petition, suggest that the FAA should grant exemptions to a few selected airmen to establish a "small control group to evaluate the validity of the age 60 concept", the granting of the requested exemption would, in the light of existing medical knowledge, necessarily have such an experimental aura about it. Therefore, in the absence of any new medical findings, the FAA can only repeat the conclusion stated in that earlier petition:

"The FAA does not have sufficient medical or other evidence at this time on which to justify initiation of a selective system of the type rejected when the age 60 rule was adopted. Until a firm basis for such a system is established, the FAA believes that the statutory directive contained in § 601(b) of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 which required the Administrator to "give full consideration to the duty resting upon air carriers to perform their services with the highest possible degree of safety in the public interest..." precludes it from conducting experiments in actual Part 121 operations. (however much "controlled") as petitioner suggests".