An arbitrator has told Canadian airline WestJet to keep pilots who have reached age 65 flying until at least next summer when it can rule on the legality of its recently imposed age cap. The airline had set Oct. 31 to fire pilots on their 65th birthday because keeping them caused scheduling difficulties. Canada doesn’t have a maximum age for airline pilots, but the U.S. follows the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) upper limit of 65. WestJet serves dozens of U.S. destinations but cannot assign the older pilots to those routes or to domestic routes that use U.S. airports as an alternate because of the U.S. age cap. At least 44 pilots would have lost their jobs on Oct. 31 and another 250 would be affected over the next five years had the policy been implemented, according to the Calgary Herald.
The Air Line Pilots Association filed a grievance in June alleging the policy violated the pilots’ contract and the Canadian Human Rights Act. It asked for an interim order blocking the policy until the larger issue could be addressed by the arbitrator, and that was granted. “The interim decision does not resolve the grievance itself but maintains the employment status of the impacted pilots while the matter proceeds through arbitration,” ALPA representative Bernie Legal said in a statement to the Herald. “ALPA will continue to prepare for the full arbitration hearing and advocate for a resolution that reflects the interests of all the pilot group.” WestJet says it will abide by the arbitrator’s ruling.
Lots of arguments have been made on both sides of this issue but it’s a Human Rights issue and an ageism issue.
In Australia and New Zealand you can fly until you want to or until you fail medical or sim check, whichever comes first. We don’t have the Canada/US problem being a long way from anywhere so our domestic guys and international to NZ don’t have that problem
I’d argue that age limits are even less relevant to safety for Part 121 and 135 ops because of highly developed CRM and automation providing a generous safety buffer in the rare case of pilot incapacitation and/or delayed reaction, etc.
The “Age 60” rule was instituted in 1959 primarily because they wanted to open up airline slots for pilots who had not been born before the turn of the twentieth century. The timing alone tells you that it was pretty arbitrary.
Then came the boom of airline expansion, and those jobs became quite attractive. Also, a lot was learned about human-factors and gerontology in general, and it became obvious that limiting job tenure based on a single non-performance-related datapoint was unfair. But in 2006, lacking any agreement on what criteria would ensure safety, regardless of age, they kicked the can down the road and simply bumped it up to age 65.
In the twenty years since then, we have developed comprehensive cognitive/motor/judgement tests, not to mention full-motion-simulators, so there’s no need for an arbitrary hard-n-fast age rule. But here’s that damn can, again.
The number of rings on the tree-stump tells you nothing about its health before you cut it down. We should follow our enlightened neighbors and base it on performance criteria.