The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; 5108; Airline Pilots' Retirement

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. There are no reports of any survivors tonight from an Air New Zealand jetliner which crashed today on an Antarctic mountain with 257 people aboard. The DC-10 was on a round trip sightseeing flight from New Zealand when it came down on the icy slopes of Mount Erebus. Twelve Americans were among the passengers, and American experts will go out to assist in the investigation. There are enough recent air crashes around the world to keep the issue of air safety firmly in the public mind at present. The Congress is considering one controversial aspect of air safety right now, and in fact the House of Representatives is due to vote on it tomorrow. It has no connection with today`s crash, but the question is, at what age should airline pilots be forced to retire? Present FAA regulations require retirement at sixty, but last year Congress raised the permissible mandatory retirement ages for non-government workers from sixty-five to seventy. Some Congressmen wanted much the same for pilots, but settled in committee for sixty-one and a half years right now while further studies are being made. And that`s what the House will vote on tomorrow. So tonight, safe at any age, or not safe past sixty? Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the legislation is primarily the work of a group of older airline pilots. The Federal Aviation Administration, which set the sixty age limit in 1959, doesn`t support it; neither do the airlines, nor the pilots` own union, the Air Line Pilots Association. The ALPA favors removing the age limit but has serious problems with the way this bill would do it. So it`s been left to the older pilots to push and lobby on their own. Much of their effort has been done through an umbrella organization, the Pilots` Right Association. The group`s legislative vice president is Jack Young, a pilot for Eastern Airlines. His interest is more than academic. As it stands now, Young must retire on his sixtieth birthday, and that`s next week, and he doesn`t like that one bit.

Voice of Capt. JACK YOUNG: Well, first of all, I`m angry. I feel that I`m physically fit and I`m functionally capable. I`ve been tested within the past two months both physically and functionally, and I`m angry and annoyed that I have to quit just because I reach sixty. The day before I`m sixty I`m perfectly safe to fly; the day after I`m not. The whole concept I had on aging has changed, mainly because age has nothing to do with a person`s physical condition; conditioning is more important than age. I don`t believe that age has anything to do with a man`s ability or his physical condition. And those of us that are physically able and functionally fit should be allowed to continue, because age itself is an arbitrary decision. I did some research, talking to doctors all over the country, and determined that in my mind there`s no basis for the rule, no safety basis, no medical basis for the rule. Insofar as the reaction time is concerned in the cockpit, the one thing we don`t want is we don`t want somebody reacting too quickly. Our procedures are laid down for us on a one, two, three order, in what we call a checklist. When we have an emergency or an abnormal procedure occurs in the airplane, we go through the checklist, mainly because ... to get us to slow down and do the right thing. It`s a hundred times more important to do something accurately in the airplane than it is to do something fast. Tests that they`ve conducted, they found that people in their eighth and ninth decades who`ve remained active have reaction times equal to or better than people forty years their junior who`ve become sedentary in their way of living.

I feel that I`m in as good physical condition today as I was twenty years ago. I feel I`m a better pilot today than I was even five years ago and will be a better pilot two years from now because of the experience I`m gaining each day I fly. Practice makes perfect, so to speak.

LEHRER: Among those who disagree with Captain Young`s basic position are the airlines themselves, thirty-one of the nation`s thirty-three major ones, at least. They have been represented in the debate by their trade association, the Air Transport Association, and its vice president for operations and engineering, Walter Jensen. Mr. Jensen is a retired American Airlines captain.

Do you have any sympathy at all for Captain Young`s anger, Mr. Jensen?

WALTER JENSEN: I am sympathetic to Jack. I`ve talked to Jack and I understand his feelings. I think the part that Jack fails to appreciate fully is that it`s difficult to detect those who should fly beyond a certain age and those who shouldn`t. The medical profession has debated this; there are those who say that the tests can be given that can detect those who should no longer fly, and there are others who question this and say that that`s not possible to be done. We`ll probably hear about that from the two doctors here, and I expect that that will probably illustrate the fact that there is a difference of opinion on this. Our view is that while that difference of opinion exists, the bill that will be considered tomorrow is correct in the part of it which says that there should be an examination of the facts of this by the National Institutes of Health as a competent medical facility that`s unbiased and that that study can provide the basis for resolving the differences among the doctors who say you can and you can`t detect these things that are important to safety in flying an airplane.

LEHRER: You object, then, to the part which raises the age to sixty-one and a half while this study is being done, is that correct?

JENSEN: That`s correct, for the reason that it doesn`t make sense to me that you would conduct a study to find out whether you should raise or lower the age, or do away with it, which is involved in this study; at the same time you would change the age. That should follow the study, not be simultaneous with the study.

LEHRER: What about Captain Young`s basic point that conditioning is more important than age for a pilot? Do you disagree?

JENSEN: I`m not sure exactly what he means by conditioning, but if he means keeping yourself fit, obviously that`s good for all of us, whether we`re pilots or any other profession. I think the real question is that there are changes that occur with age. Some of them are good; you gain more experience, you gain some ability from that experience to do certain jobs better. But there are other things that happen with age that are not good for us and don`t make for good pilots, and how to distinguish between those two is the trick that everyone is looking to solve.

LEHRER: Well, under current regulations, aren`t all airline pilots required to be examined twice a year by the FAA, and don`t most airlines also do their own examination, and aren`t there other tests that test these very things in terms of whether or not a pilot is capable of continuing to fly?

JENSEN: Up until the time you said "test these very things" I would be in agreement with you, but those tests were not designed to deal with the problems of aging beyond age sixty. They are to detect other things, and so far as I know, all of the people who are advocating an increase in the age limit, including Dr. Mohler, have indicated that there should be ...

LEHRER: Dr. Stanley Mohler, who we`ll be talking to later in the program.

JENSEN: All right, fine -- have indicated that there are additional tests that would be useful in determining the physical condition of a pilot of the upper ages.

LEHRER: All right; thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Let`s hear the case for the bill from one of its original cosponsors, Democratic Congressman Jim Lloyd of California. Congressman Lloyd is a pilot himself, considered the House expert on aviation. He`s also a member of the House Select Committee on Aging, so an expert on both. Congressman, why do you want to raise the age?

Rep. JIM LLOYD: Well, I think it`s a function of discrimination. I think that history has shown that there has never been an aircraft accident by a commercial carrier which was really attributable to the failure of a pilot over the age of sixty. Now, twenty years ago there was some sort of an agreement by the then administrator of the FAA, Mr. Quesada, and, apparently, a man at American Airlines that there needed to be an establishment of an arbitrary age, which apparently suited the needs of both parties at that time.

MacNEIL: So you believe that was just totally arbitrary, do you?

LLOYD: Oh, I think the age limit of sixty is clearly arbitrary. I think that we had a situation a couple of days ago where a man forty-eight years old died in the cockpit. But we have a fellow like Jack Young here and I`d like to think myself, at the age of fifty-seven, I`m close -- you know, what if we did this to Congress, we said, "Maybe we ought to get rid of you at the age of sixty," I`ll lay you odds we wouldn`t have much of a vote for that one. (Laughing.)

MacNEIL: I think that`s a dangerous area to get into, Congressman. What about Mr. Jensen`s point that it doesn`t make any sense to say more studies need to be done, but while they`re being done let`s raise the age anyway a year and a half?

LLOYD: Well, the point seems to be logical, except for one thing, and that is we are doing a disservice to those people like Jack Young, who has arrived at this magic age of sixty where he no longer can function.

The answer is that we ought to continue those people; I don`t think that the study itself, frankly, would take more than six months. The reason we picked sixty-one and a half was because we couldn`t get an agreement out of the committee, and in order to get the bill to the floor we agreed to the eighteen months and we agreed to the study. Frankly, most of us -I`m included; I don`t even want the study. I think that you let it go, use the physical fitness situation, set the criteria where it should be, and let us go forward from there. I think clearly the study is going to show sixty- five, seventy, whatever it may be. We are dealing today with very highly sophisticated machinery which can be operated all by itself. We don`t really need hands-on, the intrepid aviator with the scarf flying, you know, and the goggles and the whole thing. So, I think times have changed, I think that we should change with them. Medical science has improved. In the twenty years that this decision was made, medical science has made an improvement the likes of which it had done for its total history before that.

MacNEIL: Do you believe it can predict medical problems accurately enough to let pilots go on until the machinery says, "I`m afraid you`re going to have a medical problem, therefore you can`t fly anymore"?

LLOYD: Oh, I think that we can do that. I think that we can show those things. I think that we have the capacity. We are better today than we have ever been before, and as a result, I have great faith in the medical profession all the way along the line, and I think it`s shortsighted and arbitrary to say sixty years is the age and we must never transgress that.

MacNEIL: At what age would you put an arbitrary...

LLOYD: I wouldn`t put an arbitrary age. I think that it`s based on medical evaluation.

MacNEIL: You mean you`d let people fly at ninety-five if they looked good enough?

LLOYD: By golly, if they could pass the examination, demonstrated the physical fitness that`s required ... why do we have to pick an age? What`s so bad about ninety-five? What`s so bad about sixty? We had a man who died in the cockpit at the age of forty-eight. Apparently his aging process was different than mine. I want you to know that before I came here tonight I played a basketball game. And you know, that`s strenuous enough, and it certainly requires psychometric skills, far as I`m concerned. What`s significant about age? What is significant is, is the pilot safe? Is his judgment the thing that`s really going to do it for us? Do the skills that a man sixty or seventy or even eighty, are they good enough to command that aircraft to do what he wants it to do? And if it does, forget the age; we don`t need to worry about it. We want safety in the cockpit, and safety is a function of judgment.

MacNEIL: Okay. Let`s pursue that. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Jensen, safety is a function of judgment, not of age, the Congressman says.

JENSEN: Well, if I may respectfully disagree with the Congressman...

LEHRER: You don`t even have to be respectful, Mr. Jensen. go ahead.

(Laughter.)

JENSEN: These airplanes are certainly very automatic, but they don`t fly themselves. And I`m disagreeing a bit with Jack Young, too. I think he got carried away a little bit when he said that you don`t have to make any quick judgments in an airplane. Now, I recognize, as a pilot, that we`re trained to not make snap judgments if we don`t have to. But I also know -- and I`ve talked this with Jack, and I understood he agreed with me when we talked it -- that when you take off an airplane, a modern airplane, make the takeoff, and if something happens during that takeoff that calls for a question of whether you continue the takeoff or whether you reject the takeoff, there is a very difficult, very quick judgment that has to be made and it has to be made right. Otherwise you either go off the end of the runway with some of the disasters that have occurred in that respect, or you have troubles in the air. Now, that`s where a pilot has to make a very quick judgment, and there are other cases in flying where this has to be done.

LLOYD: Well, that takes age and experience, and I would hate to interrupt you, and I`d also like to disagree with you on one thing about the automation of the aircraft. You know as well as I do, Mr. Jensen, I can take a 1011-500, go up...

LEHRER: A what?

LLOYD: 1011, L-1011, it`s an aircraft which has a Category 3 capability. I think -- I really don`t know the count, but probably seven or eight movements are all that`s required to get that airplane from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. That includes, you know, the takeoff, that judgmental call that you`re talking about, pick up the gear and the flaps, throw it onto automatic and it tunes your radio, it does the whole thing, it`ll fly you all the way in, including your landing and including your automatic brakes. And that really doesn`t take an awful lot of pilot skill. It takes judgment; that`s what we`re talking about.

JENSEN: It does take judgment, but it takes rapid judgment under emergency circumstances when you have to, for example, as I said, reject the takeoff, and that...

LEHRER: Excuse me. Is it judgment that in your opinion would be impaired by age, by the simple fact of age?

JENSEN: I think that that is true. I find myself -- I`m sixty-three, and I find myself that I`m not as sharp -- and that`s the only way I know to describe it -- as I used to be. And I don`t think I would be as capable today of making that quick judgment on a rejected takeoff and do it as sharply and as well and as safely as I would if I were younger.

LLOYD: Well, Mr. Jensen, I started flying in 1942. I went through World War II, and the only reason I`d have to say that I survived is that the Japanese had people who were less capable than I was, because no one was less capable in understanding, really, what we were talking about on that, and I could barely get it airborne and down again. Today I have flown aircraft in the last -- just recently I just acquired my helicopter license this year, which is totally a control thing, where it`s muscles all the way. I have flown the DC-10, checked out in it; I`ve checked out in the 747; I just went to France down in Toulouse, and I checked out in the 8300, two and a half hours` worth of flying the aircraft, I put it through all its stalls, I shoved it up past the envelope and...

LEHRER: What, sir? I`m sorry, I`m not a pilot, so ...

LLOYD: Okay. I flew it faster than its designated maximum range. I did all of these things, I brought the aircraft in, and to demonstrate its single- engine performance -- we had a 600-foot ceiling, by the way - we came in, touched down, and as I rotated -- fully manual, now, not any automatic, and it has an automatic system -- just as I went into the clouds, started my right-hand turn to make the turnaround to come round and land again, we shut down the right engine. I`m now on one engine, handled the whole thing, the pilot was with me, who was a very fine pilot, by the way, very experienced pilot; he was also fifty-six years old, Jimmy Phillips, and he did a fine job. And the point that I`m making to you is that I think aging is an individual process. Maybe you did indeed age quicker than I did.

LEHRER: We have to go on to the doctors now.

LLOYD: Oh, indeed, we do.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes, to the medical questions involved. Dr. Douglas Busby is the former Deputy Federal Air Surgeon at the FAA and is still a consultant to a number of airlines. Dr. Busby is a cardiologist and a specialist in aerospace medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, where he is chairman of the Department of Environmental Medicine. Dr. Busby, is there any new medical sophistication that justifies raising the retirement age of pilots?

Dr. DOUGLAS BUSBY: At this time there is not. I think that there has been great advances in the field of cardiology, particularly in the area of the diagnosis of coronary artery disease, with sophisticated tech niques that I`m sure we`re going to discuss in a few moments in greater detail. But the application of these techniques perhaps may be a little bit premature at this time. Now, we`ve heard mentioned several times a situation involving the medical profession, and I think that we should clarify what our concern is, particularly with respect to the potential for pilot incapacitation. We have the concern that the pilot could possibly be disabled at the controls in an acute or emergency situation, and in contrast to the pilot who died at the controls the other evening, on November the 25th, in the past seven months we`ve had three pilots die at the controls of all jumbo airliners; the first two were within months of retirement at the age sixty. We also have the subtle incapacitation that can occur as a pilot develops medical problems that are undetected by the medical profession, particularly the aviation medical examiners, the FAA examiners who certify most pilots every six months; and then finally, which we haven`t really gotten into yet and which I thin:: is perhaps the most important matter that NIH is going to have to address itself to, and that is the disability, the subtle impairment that can occur in an aging individual which is not medical. It affects us all. MacNEIL: So you would agree with Mr. Jensen, then, that the medical profession, to now, despite all the improvements, cannot accurately or safely predict which pilots should fly later than sixty and which should not. Is that correct?

BUSBY: I agree with Mr. Jensen.

MacNEIL: Well, what is -- to use Congressman Lloyd`s words -- so magic about the age of sixty? Going back to things like insurance company actuarial tables, is sixty statistically any safer, from your point of view, than fifty-nine or sixty-one?

BUSBY: Well, having reviewed it very carefully insofar as the records that developed this rule approximately twenty years ago, the FAA did state, and very clearly, that this was an arbitrary decision based on a composition of materials, scientific documents and so on, a review of these materials by a number of very renowned experts in the field of aging and in cardiology and aerospace medicine and so on, and they set age sixty as being the most likely age at which severe deterioration, the higher-risk levels, would be occurring.

MacNEIL: And does the medical evidence in the twenty years since then, and actuarial and epidemiological evidence, suggest that that is still the right age at which to cut this off?

BUSBY: Actuarially, I believe that we are seeing greater longevity in the average individual. Now, we`re dealing with population statistics, and so far most of the studies that have been conducted in the pilot group have been on very, very highly selected individuals, such as the Navy thousand aviator study. On the other hand, with respect to performance decrements with age, we as yet do not have adequate data, at least compiled, to review.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRE R: Now to the other side of the medical question, from Dr. Stanley Mohler. Dr. Mohler is an aeromedicine specialist who worked for the FAA for seventeen years, twelve as head of its Aeromedical Applications Division. He`s also done research at the Center for Aging of the National Institutes of Health, and is now a professor and director of aerospace medicine at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Mohler is also a licensed pilot.

Doctor, you heard what Dr. Busby said, that there have not been medical advances that would justify advancing the age limit for pilots. You disagree.

Dr. STANLEY MOHLER: I disagree because the data upon which the age sixty rule was originally based was the data of the longevity and the disease incidence in U.S. persons and the general public in the 1940s and 1950s. In the last just ten years, there`s been a dramatic drop in the rate of heart disease, there`s been a marked increase in longevity, because the risk factors that have caused these deaths and these early disease developments of the `40s are now much better understood. Also, there has never been a scheduled-airline accident due to a pilot having an inflight heart attack or even a subtle incapacitation. We had to unscheduled accidents; in North Hollywood in `62, the captain was thirty-eight years old, which hardly supports an age sixty rule; in Ardmore in `65 the captain was fifty-nine years old but was flying fraudulently. He owned the airplane, he took insulin, he was taking cardiac drugs.

LEHRER: Well, what about the point that Dr. Busby made, that you`re talking about things other than just pure physical medicine here, subtle things in terms of judgment, I think you`re referring to -- the mental process as much as anything else?

MOHLER: It`s now known, as shown by Dr. Butler of the National Institute on Aging and other aging studies throughout the country, that judgment progressively increases with age, even into the eighties and nineties, in the absence of disease. And this type of judgment increases and improves air safety. In fact, all of the jumbo jets are flown by the older pilots, in the fifties and late fifties, and there`s no reason to turn them out for either judgment reasons or medical reasons today.

LEHRER: What do you see, then, as the connection between aging, generally, and the skills and abilities required of an airline pilot?

MOHLER: If the pilot remained active in flying, gets his three flight checks each year, gets his two FAA examinations each year medically, gets his additional medical exam that eighty percent of the U.S. pilots get from their airline medical departments, there is no connection between chronological age and the safety and ability of that pilot to perform.

LEHRER: Is there any particular age where you think that age itself would be the time to do a cutoff, or would you agree with Congressman Lloyd that don`t have an age, just have the tests?

MOHLER: I agree with Congressman Lloyd: ability to perform, and free of impairing diseases are the two qualifications. Sex, race or age are irrelevant to the ability of an individual to fly.

LEHRER: And medical science, in your opinion, is able to test the things that need to be tested now to make sure that a person can continue to fly, even if they`re ninety-five, twenty-five, or anything in between.

MOHLER: Yes. We passed that point several years ago, and the FAA, whom I commend extremely highly, has now got back in the air over 200 airline pilots who were alcohol addicts. They have done this on the basis of the new testing for brain function and nervous system and cardiac and body functioning, showing that these pilots are now completely healthy and are able to fly. The same tests can be applied directly if questions arise on aging pilots.

LEHRER: All right, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Dr. Busby, Dr. Mohler says the earlier FAA rule was based on a data base that no longer applies, medical statistics from the `40s.

MOHLER: To a degree it doesn`t apply, but I think the greatest concern here is the fact that the majority of the preamble to the rule focused on the cardiovascular system and particularly the role of acute cardiac incapacitation: the scenario of the pilot falling over his controls and pushing the aircraft into the ground, vis-a-vis the Ardmore accident that Dr. Mohler referred to.

MacNEIL: I see. In conclusion, let me ask you this question: are we at a point where medical science has made a number of advances in being able to predict that somebody`s going to have medical problems, but we`re not quite there yet and it may be something like maybe five years too early to be considering this? Congressman Lloyd, what would you say to that?

LLOYD: Oh, I don`t think that`s so. I`m not convinced at all that medical science hasn`t made the strides it has. If we can replace hearts, if we can do all these things which we hear -- and you know, I`m in the presence of experts in that area, and I`m certainly not going to get into a medical discussion when I`m really not capable of it -- all I know is,

I know what the aging process is, and I know that it`s an individual thing. I know people who at the age of fifty, frankly, are senile. I also know that at the age of seventy-five and eighty -- and I know a lady who is eighty-six years old who is as healthy and strong as she`s ever been; she`s a good friend of mine, she`s alert, she`s capable, and she drives her own car, she does her own things; so aging is an individual process, and that process can be watched and we can determine what the thresholds are over which we ought not to pass. And it ...

MacNEIL: Well, let me ask Mr. Jensen this: Mr. Jensen, would you concede that perhaps there may be advances, say, in three or four or five years which would make this an idea that could then be discussed, that you would support?

JENSEN: I think it should be discussed and the facts determined right now. I have not made a judgment on who`s right among the doctors, because it`s not my province to make that kind of judgment. I think this discussion has illustrated our dilemma, and that is, doctors feel one way and doctors feel another way, and we think it`s a good idea to have a group like the NIII make an objective study of that and come out with an answer, and we`re willing to live with that answer.

MacNEIL: Dr. Mohler, in a second or two, would you think maybe it would be worth waiting a few years until you`re all more certain, your colleagues all agree?

MOHLER: No, let`s do it right now; and many physicians agree with me that now`s the time to do it. We`ve spent billions of dollars on research that relates to this problem; we`re certifying alcoholics and other persons using that payoff. Let`s do it now for aging.

MacNEIL: What we have to do now is leave, and I thank you all, gentlemen, for joining us this evening; and good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.