Opinion: Pilot Groups’ Empty Rhetoric Masking Politics

By rejecting ICAO’s age 67 proposal, ALPA and APA expose a double standard.

EPAS Leadership Team

Friday, September 12, 2025 at 01:00 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Ryan Ewing

Flight deck of an Airbus aircraft [Credit: Shutterstock]

Key Takeaways:

The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Allied Pilots Association (APA) are criticized for hypocritically rejecting a proposal to raise the pilot age limit to 67 for U.S. pilots, while simultaneously supporting Canadian members who fly beyond 65 under similar medical standards.
The article argues that ALPA's opposition is driven by political pandering to junior members and leadership's self-interest, rather than genuine safety concerns, as there's no substantive data linking age 65 to decreased safety.
Overwhelming evidence, including past safety improvements when the age limit was raised to 65, medical advancements, and pilot shortage forecasts, supports increasing the retirement age based on performance and medical fitness, not an arbitrary age.
The unions' stance is accused of damaging the reputation and livelihoods of experienced aviators, undermining safety by removing mentorship, and exacerbating global pilot shortages.

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The Air Line Pilots Association’s (ALPA) latest rejection of ICAO Working Paper 349 —a proposal to raise the upper pilot age limit to 67—is more of the same: hot air from a leadership more concerned with reelection than safety. Its talking points are contradictory and reveal a union trapped by populism, pandering to junior members, and abandoning the very principles on which it was founded.

Most glaring is ALPA’s hypocrisy. Canadian pilots, represented by ALPA, routinely fly beyond age 65 under Canadian law, yet ALPA tells Congress and ICAO that age 67 is unsafe. If ALPA truly believed its rhetoric, it would oppose its Canadian members’ operations. Instead, the union applies double standards: Canadian pilots are acceptable past 65, but U.S. pilots—under identical ICAO and FAA medical standards—must be forced out.