In the Beatles hit, a young Paul McCartney wondered, “will you still need me… when I’m 64.” The answer is increasingly, yes. The over-60 crowd is sharper and fitter than ever before, and they’re not about to fly into greener pastures with a golden watch on the wings of a forced early retirement.

This played itself out last week as congress, the senate, and then our commander-in-chief approved fast-tracked legislation to raise the mandatory retirement age for pilots from 60 to 65. The ease with which this legislation passed undermines a fierce debate about airline pilot age that’s been going on for decades.

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member John Spreitz.

Opponents to raising the minimum retirement age see it as a safety issue, arguing that the effects of age diminish pilot capacity. Slowed reflexes, they say, can be catastrophic in the cockpit when split-second decisions are sometimes the difference between life and death.

On the other side, are those who see forced retirement at 60 as discrimination, arguing that if an experienced pilot can pass the same standardized and rigorous medical tests as anyone else, why should he or she have to retire simply due to biological age, especially at a time when the aviation industry teeters on the verge of a pilot shortage?

Personally, I feel that if you can pass the ratings tests and pilot reviews, then you should be able to fly, no matter how old you are. But such tests should be more frequent the older a person gets. (Case in point: in her elder years, my late-grandmother clung to her driver’s license, even though she had a terrifying tendency to drive the wrong way down some of Washington, D.C.’s one-way streets.)

If he or she is in good mental and physical health, then would you feel more secure with a seasoned 65-year-old veteran flying the plane or a rookie who’s fresh from the flight simulation deck?