They are retired Federal employees who can keep their Insurance until eligible for Medicare, then it becomes a supplement or you can drop it.
Republicans sure have a strange way to show their “concern” about air safety by kneecapping the FAA…
Point missed - video game reflexes decline with age. Wisdom and experience increase with age. At some point the reflex skills drop too far for the experience to compensate for. I have flown into or around New York enough times to know that is no job for a brand new guy and it also is no job for an old guy.
Skills aside, many of us passing the 60 mark are just not up to basically being fully awake with the brutal schedules they can have.
Having flown into and out of KEWR since 1994 in a part 121 capacity I had the opportunity to visit the TRACON there and I can tell you the majority of the controllers are in their fifties and close to retirement.
Would be nice if airline pilots had an option like that.
I guess you could say it would be nice if ATC folks made Airline wages also….
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How much longer do you think they could keep that up? Do you want to just let them stay there until they wreck a few planes? Do they WANT to stay there?
I will give them high marks for getting the job done, they have always done a fine job for me.
Unfortunately, the US lost its gold standard for aviation to the EU and EASA many years ago. I remember reading an article in one of the aviation trade magazines about how the FAA had taken a back seat to EASA as far as leading the field. This, if I remember correctly, was back in the 90’s. The reasons given were the consistent underfunding of FAA, refusal to fill vacant positions, and staff cuts had rendered the agency unable to provide the operational and engineering oversight it once provided, and therefore it became a back seat passenger on the world aviation stage. Not any of the FAA employees’ fault. It was congress. Oh, while I’m at it: Does anyone remember the Aviation trust fund? A fund created from the taxes on aviation fuel to modernize the ATC system. It was raided by various administrations for other things. Not a penny went to aviation. And each party’s administrations were responsible. Not just one.
Now we are where we are. On the subject of retirement age: Controllers should have to pass recurrent training, just like pilots. Retirement age should be the same, as long as they can pass a controller “check ride”. Now, even technicians have to keep current, or they can’t use their certificates, or IA’s.
I’ve always appreciated our controllers, and not had a bad experience other than some re routing that was clearly the fault of mistakes being made. However, we all make mistakes, don’t we. It’s how we recover that shows how good we are!
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