This paper investigates the validity of mandatory retirement at age sixty for commercial airline pilots under the FAA's Age 60 Rule, first enacted in 1959. Drawing on medical research, congressional testimony, aviation safety data, and workforce studies, the paper evaluates the three primary justifications for mandatory retirement: risk of sudden incapacitation, loss of cognitive function, and adverse health events. It argues that the original rule was promulgated on outdated and economically motivated grounds rather than rigorous scientific evidence, and that advances in medicine and aviation technology have made blanket age-based retirement increasingly difficult to justify. The paper concludes that retirement eligibility should be determined by sound scientific study rather than arbitrary age thresholds.
There once was a time when our world seemed so much more orderly, so much more organized. One was born, went to school, grew up, got a job, and spent the best years of one's life at the same company. Then came age fifty-five, or age sixty-five at some companies, and it was time to retire — and one could expect a comfortable retirement. There would be a good pension, free healthcare, Social Security, and in general, enough time to relax and enjoy life. Many large corporations and government agencies had specific mandatory retirement ages. In large part, this system was designed to facilitate the advancement of younger personnel; positions in management were opened up to members of the next generation.
In some fields, however, mandatory retirement was justified on different grounds. In these cases, older employees were believed to be more prone to accidents and error than their less senior counterparts. Older employees might also be considered out of touch with the latest developments — too long out of training or out of school to be expected to know what newer personnel knew. One industry in which this system of mandatory retirement was particularly prevalent was commercial aviation. As a matter of course, pilots were retired when they reached a certain age. Not only did they make way for younger pilots, but their removal was considered tantamount to preventing accidents that were bound to happen. Thus, the system of mandatory retirement in the commercial aviation industry was as much a matter of public safety as of sound business policy.
It will therefore be the aim of this paper to investigate the validity of these claims. Are commercial airline pilots really a special case? Are these highly trained professionals truly so afflicted with issues of ill health and poor performance as they enter their "golden years?" If so, there must be facts and figures to support the case. If not, then we are dealing simply with a prejudice that must be combated.
One of the strongest reasons put forward for mandatory early retirement is the supposed diminishing ability of older workers. Age-performance related issues are among the strongest rationalizations offered in its favor, and these take essentially two interrelated forms. First, it is argued that mandatory retirement enables older workers to "retire with dignity" — with the perception that they retired because of a personnel policy applicable to all employees. If mandatory retirement is eliminated, there may be a social stigma to retirement, because it may be perceived as an indication of competence or performance problems. Second, it is argued that mandatory retirement minimizes the need to monitor and assess job performance of older employees. Workers nearing mandatory retirement age are generally permitted to continue their employment without careful review, even if their performance deteriorates below an acceptable level. If mandatory retirement is eliminated, employers will be obligated to use more demanding performance appraisal systems for older employees, which might place undue emotional pressure on the workers.1
Yet while we can all understand these concerns, we should ask whether it is an undisputed fact of life that older people are less competent than younger people. Many are the times when age equals wisdom; the greater the number of years on the job, the greater the amount of experience. Would you rather consult the young physician who just graduated from medical school, or the doctor who has been practicing for decades?
In particular, there is a widespread belief that older employees suffer from poor health that prevents them from properly fulfilling the requirements of their job. This belief, however, is not supported by the evidence. After reviewing the available data, researchers have concluded that there is little support for the view that health is a major factor explaining early retirement, and that increasingly poor health cannot explain the long-term trend toward earlier retirement in the United States. For example, only 12 percent of more than one thousand men surveyed by the Social Security Administration gave poor health as the primary reason for leaving their main job, and many researchers note that even these statistics overstate the role of poor health.2
Nevertheless, despite this evidence, the United States Congress has allowed for the continuation of mandatory retirement programs in certain industries. Though tending toward a program of equal rights and nondiscrimination in almost all other areas, the law continues to allow for certain bona fide occupational exceptions. The commercial aviation industry is one of these exceptions. As affirmed in Western Airlines, Inc. v. Criswell et al., the applicable guidelines require that (1) there be a reasonable basis for believing that all persons over a given age are unable to perform safely the requirements of the job, and (2) it would be highly impractical for the employer to treat older employees on an individual basis. Interestingly, it is not unlikely that, in the not too distant future, airline pilots may be the only group of persons subject to mandatory retirement as early as age sixty.3
The commercial aviation industry's mandatory retirement age of sixty is based directly on FAA regulations. The FAA, like so many other government agencies, has as its primary purpose ensuring the safety and well-being of the general public, and its regulations are supposed to be based on clear scientific evidence. Yet in the case of the mandatory retirement requirement, the situation is not so simple. In fact, it may even be said that the current regulation, which was promulgated in 1959, was the result not of careful scientific inquiry but of corporate pressure.
Foremost in the fight to amend FAA policy along more scientific lines was former commercial aviation pilot Jim Gibbons, a Republican representative from Nevada. According to Gibbons:
"Primary among the reasons for abolishing the Age 60 Rule is that there is no hard evidence that individuals, after their 60th birthday, become universally incapable of handling the same important tasks they did at age 59 and 364 days. Certain scientific reports even show that a pilot's capacity for safely operating a commercial jetliner increases after age 60. At a time when the federal government is dedicating billions of taxpayer dollars to the goal of increasing security for the nation's traveling public, it seems tremendously counter-intuitive to force into early retirement our most experienced pilots."4
Furthermore, since all commercial airline pilots are required to pass rigorous, twice-yearly flight physical examinations to ensure that their reflexes, health, and mental capacity remain at the highest levels possible, mandatory retirement based solely on age is argued to be unnecessary.5
Medical evidence was manipulated in the rule's original implementation. A closer examination of the "facts" would have revealed much that was not applicable to the situation at hand. Former ALPA president Clarence Sayen challenged FAA Administrator Elwood Quesada to justify his decision to enact the rule, and Quesada responded with 41 highly questionable articles culled from the medical archives of the 1950s, the majority published decades earlier. In addition to being astonishingly outdated, these articles described characteristics of the general population and not of airline pilots.6 The economic dimension of this decision was clear: junior pilots cost considerably less than pilots with many years of experience.
"Three safety claims evaluated against evidence"
The mandatory retirement age for pilots of civilian aircraft was enacted in 1959 based on what were supposedly considerations of passenger safety. Even at the time, it was widely believed that the real considerations were economic. Young, inexperienced pilots come much cheaper than pilots with many years of flight experience. Today, the economic gulf between the old and the young is even greater. With the decline of large corporations' "cradle-to-grave" benefit plans, older employees — in this case pilots — frequently represent expensive liabilities to corporate accountants eager to cut costs. Furthermore, many of the arguments against lifting the age-60 retirement requirement, while not entirely without merit, seem grounded in the conditions of another era.
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