Flying has never been safer in the United States. Our country’s current approach to aviation safety is clearly working — the U.S. is the gold standard for aviation safety around the world.
Despite this achievement, lawmakers working on the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill are considering introducing new risk and rolling back safety regulations just as passengers are returning to the skies.
Right now, some in Congress are seeking to unilaterally raise the airline pilot retirement age from 65 to 67 without scientific study or safety research. What we do know is that this ill-conceived proposal could introduce more risk into our aviation system, disrupt airline operations, cause more flight delays and cancellations, and increase ticket prices for passengers.
This political exercise would also put the U.S. in conflict with the international retirement age standard. As a result, some pilots would be limited to flying only domestic routes, and thousands would need to be retrained to operate different aircraft types and for different positions.
While the U.S. airline industry as a whole and most airlines individually have more pilots now than before the pandemic, raising the pilot retirement age would not increase the number of pilots. To the contrary, a retirement age increase would worsen the pilot training backlog that resulted from the pandemic and is just now beginning to level off, and it would introduce a new and unknown risk in a system that’s currently extraordinarily safe.
As Congress considers the FAA reauthorization legislation, which sets the standards for aviation regulations, air safety champions like Illinois Democrats U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, who have been leading the fight for safe skies, are facing strong headwinds. Special interest lobbyists in Washington are arguing to arbitrarily raise the pilot retirement age without analyzing the safety and operational consequences and roll back pilot qualification and training requirements, the repercussions of which are clear to all.
These proposed changes to air safety are driven by some airlines’ pursuit of profit at any cost. Although they received substantial support during the pandemic, some airlines still failed to prepare for increased travel demand. The result for passengers has been flight delays and cancellations and other operational issues that have been exacerbated by foreseeable challenges such as summer weather. Poor decision-making by some airlines should not be used to justify efforts to introduce new risk or roll back safety.
As lawmakers continue to debate the FAA reauthorization bill, the stakes for air safety couldn’t be higher. Weakening safety standards or introducing new risk is nothing less than a recipe for disaster.
Capt. Jason Ambrosi is the 12th president of the Air Line Pilots Association, International, the world’s largest airline pilot union representing more than 74,000 airline pilots in the U.S. and Canada./Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service