Air Canada Age 60 Limit To End

[777longhaul]

J.O.

Good question. Why the court action now.

This has been attempted in the 70's, 80' and 90's. There were different USA rules, ICAO RULES etc. The cost to do this is enourmous. The court time, legal time, personal time etc is not possible on a small group bases.

Remember, Transport Canada has NO maximum, age restriction on a pilots licence. That was done a couple of decades ago.

The current V/K issue has been going since 2003-2005. It is not something new.

There are many pilots who are on the silent list for this issue. That is to say, they are not vocal to the acpa types that are bent on fighting this issue. Many pilots need to go longer to get a better pension, assuming there is a pension to get in the future. The pensions, are under funded, both the AC pilots pension, and the CAI pilots pension. If....there is a change to the contract, to allow pilots to go past the mandatory 60, then the pension plans will be in better shape, due to less initial draw down on them. The indexing was stolen out of the plan, by the courts after ac went bankrupt. However, senior management still has all their benefits and indexing in the management fund. Nice eh.

There are not thousands of pilots trying to get this issue changed. So the impact is not massive. It does affect progression, no doubt, but it is not on a large scale. The pilots at ac, have taken many pay cuts, reduced hours, etc etc, to avoid layoffs of the junior pilots. That is a good thing, and the right thing to do. It saves them and it save the company money in reductions, and training etc. It also, allows the co to ramp up quickly when times improve.

I know of several pilots, who are hoping that this issue changes, to allow a pilot to fly past 60. They are in their mid 50's, and they want to work longer to obtain max pension. There are many varied reasons why a pilot might want to work longer, and to force him/her to retire at 60 is not right. If the anti 60 group want to retire at 60, fine, make the option to retire at 60, an option. They can still go if they want to. They wont though. This whole refusal by acpa is to get rid of as many senior pilots as possible, and then as the younger pilots approach 60, they will insist that the law be changed. Nothing surprising about that, it is just the way life is. Look at the age, and seniority, of the acpa structure. It is all about choices. So, now the courts will decide this, and the opportunity, that acpa had, to mitigate this issue, will be out of their hands, and into the mindset of the judges. Sad, that the line pilots are not given real life information by acpa.