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 article asserts that ALPA and APA's opposition to raising the pilot age limit to 67 is driven by political pandering and leadership self-interest, not genuine safety concerns, citing their inconsistent stances and the lack of scientific evidence for an arbitrary age cutoff.
It argues that there is no substantive data to support a hard pilot age limit, noting that previous increases to the age limit improved safety and that rigorous medical standards are a more relevant measure of pilot fitness.
Raising the pilot age to 67 is presented as beneficial, as it would retain experienced aviators, alleviate growing pilot shortages, and align with modern medical realities, thus enhancing overall aviation safety.

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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.