Fighting to Fly

Bert Yetman is a man with a mission: abolishing a long-standing federal regulation that forces the nation’s commercial airline pilots to retire at age 60. Yetman, a retired Southwest Airlines pilot, is president of the Professional Pilots Federation, an organization he helped form in 1990 to fight the Federal Aviation Administration’s age 60 rule, which went into effect in 1959.

Two Capitol Hill lawmakers—Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Jim Gibbons of Nevada, both Republicans—have introduced legislation that would bump up the retirement age for pilots to 65.

Yetman, who lives in Grapevine, Texas, spoke recently with Bill Hogan of the AARP Bulletin about his organization and its campaign to overturn the FAA’s age 60 rule.

Q: How did you first become involved with this issue?

Bert Yetman: I was employed at Southwest Airlines as a pilot. In 1991, about 18 months before my retirement date, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, our pilots’ union, called me in and said, “Why don’t you do something about this age 60 rule?” I said, “Sure, I’ll try.”

Several weeks later a group of pilots from various airlines met in Crystal City, Va., just outside Washington. We talked it over and decided we would get together. So we got a list of all the pilots age 55 and up and sent out a mailing, asking for contributions.

Q: Out of this meeting came the Professional Pilots Federation?

BY: Yes, we decided on the name at our next meeting and stuck to it.

Q: Then what happened?

BY: Well, we were kind of naive about this. We thought if we got a mass of people complaining, it would be over in a year. But for about five and a half years, we appealed to Congress and the FAA, to no avail.

Tony Broderick, the FAA’s rules manager [associate administrator for regulation and certification] at the time, said, “We see 59-year-old pilots every year who want to change the rules, but the next year they never come back, and nobody’s ever been consistent on this.” So we decided we were going to be consistent, persistent, annoying, abrasive—whatever it took.

Some officials of the FAA wanted to get rid of the rule, but they were not going to change it themselves. If they changed it and somebody over 60 had an accident, they feared that people would point right at the FAA and say, “Well, you just changed that rule.” They didn’t want that. So they wouldn’t help us out in any way.

Q: Why, in your judgment, has this been such an uphill struggle?

BY: Two reasons: First, the FAA doesn’t want to change [the rule]. Second, there’s all the ALPA [Air Line Pilots Association] money. They have millions and millions of dollars that we don’t have, and they give considerable sums to Congress to get done what they want done.

Q: Why has ALPA been so opposed to this?

BY: In 1959, when the FAA was promulgating the rule, ALPA initiated a lawsuit to stop the FAA from doing it, saying they didn’t have the authority to put an age 60 rule into effect. They lost that lawsuit. So the rule went into effect, and ALPA fought it in the courts and before Congress for about 20 years and did not get it changed. Then, in 1980, due to the demographics of the airline industry after deregulation—with more airlines hiring younger pilots—the demographics of the union changed. The young pilots want earlier promotions, which are available if they kick us out of the seat early. ALPA’s board of directors then decided to support the age 60 rule rather than fight it any longer.

Q: So it was a 180-degree turn?

BY: Yes. And as we speak, ALPA has finished a survey to see whether the pilots want to retain the age 60 rule or whether ALPA should switch its position and start fighting it again.

Q: Are there any studies that relate age to ability?

BY: Yes, the independent studies that are out there show that there’s no medical need for an age 60 rule. The Aerospace Medical Association in Alexandria, Va., has come out this year with a change of policy, saying that there are no medical reasons for an age 60 rule.

The Civil Aeromedical Association also did the same thing a couple of years ago, changed its position.

There are many, many studies out there.

Q: Do you think that, in fact, it might be actually safer to fly with a 59-year-old than with a 29-year-old in his first year as a commercial pilot?

BY: Absolutely. If you draw a line chart, it shows that the most accidents occur [with pilots] between the ages of 24 and 39 years, peaks out there, and then the line goes downhill consistently to age 55. The chart shows it staying at that level until age 63, and then it starts heading slightly up, to age 68 or 69, before it even equals the 24-to-39 age group.

Q: Recently the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case your organization brought against the FAA to overturn the age 60 rule. Does that exhaust your avenues in the courts to have it changed?

BY: It exhausts the avenue we used this time. It does not preclude future lawsuits, and in fact that was our fourth or fifth we have brought against the FAA.

There’s a catch-22 here. The FAA says it will pull the license of any carrier that allows pilots over 60 to fly. The EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] says it’s against the law for an employer to discriminate on the basis of age, but we’re not employed by the FAA.

Q: So is the battle right now in Congress?

BY: Yes, there’s legislation—H.R. 65 in the House and S. 65 in the Senate—that would raise the age to 65 and tie it to Social Security, which as you know will go to 67 by 2022.

Q: What is your assessment of the chance that this ultimately will become law?

BY: I think it is going to change. It almost depends on ALPA. If ALPA changes its position on the age 60 rule—and I personally believe it will—I don’t see how the FAA can be the lone voice in the forest. Everybody else is against it.

The FAA has repeatedly said that obviously there must be some age limit. But there doesn’t have to be a chronological age limit. Co-pilots need an annual physical; pilots need one every six months. If you are over 40 you need an EKG physical.

The FAA did a study on the longevity of airline pilots. The study concluded that because of the physicals every year and because of the good state of health we’re in when we’re hired, we catch things early and are expected to live at least five years longer than our average nonpilot counterpart.

There are people who are 55 or maybe 50 who shouldn’t be flying. And there are 65-year-olds and 70-year-olds who can fly as well as ever, maybe better because they have the experience and knowledge to be safer and their health is good.

Q: This has been a long crusade for you. Why have you kept at it for so long?

BY: I ask myself that question. When Herb Kelleher [the chairman of Southwest Airlines] called me to offer his help, he said, “You certainly are a fighter.” And I relish that. I don’t give up easily.

I was a fighter pilot in the Air Force for 20 years. I flew single-engine fighters, twin-engines in Vietnam—F100s, F86s. When I get into a fight, I don’t quit until it’s over.