AARP Urges Court to Uphold the Rights of Older Airline Pilots Date: 11/20/01 The Federal Aviation Administration’s "Age 60 Rule" disqualifies individuals age 60 and older from serving as pilots but does not forbid them from serving as a flight officer. The flight officer monitors the aircraft's fuel, electrical, hydraulic and other systems but does not pilot the aircraft. While the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) broadly prohibits mandatory retirement at any age for most employees, there are exceptions for pilots and public safety personnel including federal, state, and local police and firefighters. These exceptions are the result of enduring stereotypes about declining physical and mental capacity with increasing age. AARP has historically and consistently opposed such exceptions on both the legislative and regulatory fronts. Unlike many other airlines, American Airlines does not allow its older pilots to "downbid" into the flight officer position, so they are forced into retirement at age 60. A group of older pilots filed suit, claiming that American's policy violated the ADEA. The district court in Tice v. American Airlines, Inc. dismissed the plaintiffs' age discrimination lawsuit after ruling that it did not have jurisdiction over the age claims. The court concluded that it would have to interpret the collective bargaining agreement between the pilots' union and American before it could determine if the pilots' age claims were meritorious. The Railway Labor Act (RLA) states that any dispute that can be conclusively resolved by interpreting the collective bargaining agreement must be submitted to mandatory arbitration. The pilots appealed. AARP filed a "friend of the court" brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit asserting that the plaintiffs' right to a work place free from arbitrary age discrimination is firmly grounded in ADEA, not in the collective bargaining agreement. In other words, the brief argues, American is trying to hide behind the collective bargaining process in order to shield itself from liability for a corporate policy that would be in place with or without the collective bargaining agreement. AARP's brief also emphasized that forced retirement, the most arbitrary form of age discrimination, should not be reduced to a simple contract dispute. Contact person: Laurie McCann Foundation Litigation mailto:litigation@aarp.org Top of Page