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January 13, 1970 Page 70
Aviation DAILY

ALPA-FAA DISPUTE OVER RETIRE-AT-60 RULE CENTERS ON STUDIES OF AGING

If the Air Line Pilots Assn. and the FAA ever lock horns in court or in an FAA hearing room over the retire-at-60 rule, the controversy will probably deal with scientific methods used to study pilot aging in relation to the rest of the population. Eventually, it must be determined whose medical evidence is best to support or reject FAA's rule.
This much can be inferred from court papers, congressional testimony and talks with FAA officials, ALPA personnel and airline executives, as ALPA launches another attempt to upset the 10-year old regulation. First issued Dec. 1, 1959 by the then FAA Administrator E.R. Quesada, the rule has been challenged most recently by ALPA in federal court in Washington and before a Senate subcommittee. A related case is pending before the New York State Commission on Human Relations.
Pilots as a group, so the ALPA argument goes, are healthier than the general population and many at 60 years are physically fit to fly airline aircraft beyond that age.
In a class suit filed in the U.S. District Court for D.C., three recently retired trunk carrier pilots cited studies at the Lovelace Foundation, Alburquerque, N.M., in their allegation that "medical opinion relied upon" at the time that the rule was first issued is "no longer considered correct."
Named as defendants are Transportation Secretary John A. Volpe and FAA Administrator John H. Shaffer in the suit filed by Truman R. Outland, Charles O. Rogers and Carroll Latimer. The pilots also claim that their rights as citizens have been abused by the compulsory retirement rule.
They allege that the age-60 rule goes beyond the "statutory authority" of Shaffer and his predecessor Quesada. The rule, they state, is "not reasonably related" to the administrator's authority to insure the safety of aircraft, or for the protection of persons and property on the ground, or for the safety of civil aircraft flight in air commerce.
Although ALPA has pulled out two medical studies to support its argument, the Lovelace Foundation research on aging, funded since 1960 by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, is the most prominent.
Late in 1968, two physician-investigators, Robert Proper and Richard L. Masters, concluded that airline pilots are healthier than the general population, according to the complaint. Such pilots showed a smaller proportion of body fat to their total weight, less hearing loss from aging, showed no "significant" change in blood pressure with age, had better heart functioning and healthier lungs.
Most Recent Findings
The complaint describes the Proper-Masters project as "the most recent, authoritative and complete findings to date on this specific subject matter, and clearly illustrates that the alleged medical findings relied upon by "...Quesada and in a 1960 ALPA court case..."are no longer accepted by leading medical authorities as valid, and that continued enforcement of this regulation based on outdated medical information is unlawful."
DOT has not yet filed an answer to the complaint, and FAA medical officers decline to comment officially. However, one FAA source put it this way: "Whether 60 is the right age for retirement, nobody is able to determine. We simply cannot predict when a man may be well one day and die the next. We can't check out a human being like we do an aircraft. People die just as quickly after age 60 today as they did 50 years ago."
FAA last year proposed a new rule requiring additional electrocardiographic examinations for air transport pilots to detect significant heart disease (DAILY, June 2), but ALPA opposed it on the grounds it was unnecessary. The rule is still pending.
ALPA spokesmen have said privately that some airlines would favor an easing up of the retire-at-60 rule. The pilots point out that it costs an airline from $200,000 to $250,000 to bring a man up the ladder to fill the vacant captain's seat. One trunkline spokesman says he "doesn't buy the argument on training costs," but concedes that the retirement issue "actually gets right back to individuals. It's a tough situation to get any logic out of."
Two of the three pilots (Outland and Rogers) who filed the court complaint submitted statements earlier before the Senate subcommittee on employment and retirement incomes, chaired by Sen.
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