December Update
Jan 3, 2004
December, 2003 Volume 13, Issue 12
To The Court
Presidents Message
About sixteen months after filing our Petition for Exemptions with the FAA, we've been rejected as surmised, and are free to go to the appeals court. Our notice of filing was immediately given to the D.C. Court of Appeals, and a Court Order (schedule) was received from the court. Our case number is 03-1386 and our paperwork has to be submitted to the court by December 1, 2003, with follow-up forms by December 15, 2003. Let's hope the court is swifter than the FAA.
Already on my desk is the rough outline of PPF lead lawyer, Tony Bothwell's topics of note for our appeals court filing. We will expand on those topics and Tony will put it all into legalese for submission to the court. On December 1st, the bar will be raised.
With the receipt of the FAA's rejection of our Petition, we quickly put a stop to our planned District Court action charging the FAA with unreasonable delay. That will save us some funds, however we will be responsible for the startup and partially written brief by the D.C. lawyers. We would have been filed the next Monday, had there been no FAA response. Whether or not the FAA got wind of our unreasonable delay action, prompting them to expeditiously reply, or if the letters from Senators and Representatives on our behalf instigated their action is irrelevant. We just wanted an answer.
At last we will be able to get our accusations of fraud and abuse of power in front of a three judge panel. Our Petition is strong...and different from any previously filed. When the judges see our documentation, it will be difficult for them to form any other opinion than what the evidence presents. Unlike previous cases the court must not "defer to the agency (FAA)" but must judge the case on evidence presented, and that will carry the day for us.
Our thanks to the many volunteers answering our request for additional Petitioners. With the response from the FAA, that need has vanished. Supplementary names would have been needed to keep our Petitioner list from surpassing the age of 60. Our original Petitioners were near or above the age of 58 when we drew up the Petition, however, with the 16 month FAA delay, most had gone beyond 60. To keep our list "fresh", we planned to add names, as needed. Two names were added immediately as we recognized the necessity of keeping our requests for exemption from becoming moot. We would now need FAA permission to add names, and that might further allow the FAA to delay court action. Your names will be kept at the ready, just in case. Thanks again.
We would expect to see the same Justice Department lawyers as in previous cases, as they (two ladies) probably know more about the Age 60 Rule than others. However, in prior cases, knowing the court would "defer to the agency", they had an easy job. Just put on a show and let the law work for them. Not this time!
Note: FYI, the Court Order is reproduced on page 2.
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On the news this week, our Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of the alleged terrorists and Al Quieda detainees at Camp Xray, Quantanimo Bay, Cuba, being held away from U.S. territory and the U.S. legal system. Should the detainees be protected by our legal system? Something is wrong with that system when our U.S. Supreme Court will hear their complaint, but not a 43 year old travesty of justice...the Age 60 Rule. As you recall, PPF was previously turned down on a requested Supreme Court hearing.
Bert Yetman
NOTICE: Each member receives a remittance slip every month. It is not a bill. We do not send you a renewal notice when your dues have expired. Its up to you to keep current. We put all our funding into the fight against the Age 60 Rule, and keeping track of billing and membership expirations costs money. We print this notice every now and then for clarification to our newer members.
Some members do not have access to our website. For their benefit excerpts from our Petition will appear in this and future newsletters.
The Golaszewski Flight Time Study's demographic flaws - and their misleading effects - are common knowledge in the scientific community.
Explaining the demographic flaws in the Golaszewski's 1983 paper, Dr. Andreas E. Stuck observed:
Only one study covering the period 1976 to 1980 [Golaszewski(1983)] compared aircraft accident rates of over-60year-old pilots with those of younger pilots. The accident rate of 60 to 69 year-old-pilots with a Class 1 medical certificate ...was found to be two times higher than that of 50 to 59-year-old pilots. [Note: This same false finding appeared in Broach's Report 4 (supra note 145) and was presented to AsMA members.] The comparison is, however problematic. While the accident rate for 60-69 year old pilots was calculated by the number of accidents in general aviation divided by the number of pilot hours flown in general and small commercial aviation aircraft, the accident rate for 50-59-year-old pilots was calculated differently. In this latter case, in addition to hours flown in general aviation and small commercial aircraft, pilot hours flown in large commercial aircraft were also included in the calculation of the accident rate. This results in an underestimation of the accident rate in 50-59-year-old pilots.
In 1992, Diane Hyland and others analyzed the 1983 Golaszewski study extensively-and critically. Their main criticism, replicating those of Drachman and Stuck, was:
The rarity of accidents involving [medical] Class 1 pilots strongly suggests that the distribution of such accidents across the various categories will be different.... The Part 121 pilots accumulate a substantial number of flight hours but contribute (proportionately) very few accidents. That is, they contribute substantially to the denominator of the ratio for the accident rate but hardly at all to the numerator. It is likely that this contribution changes as a function of age, so that the apparent effects of age in the Golaszewski data may be an artifact of the way accident rates are computed, i.e., they may reflect differences in flight hours accumulated by Class 1 pilots rather than differences in the likelihood of accidents.
Edwin Kay, professor of computer science and statistics at Lehigh University, similarly criticized the Golaszewski study:
Combining pilot classes, as done in the Golaszewski analysis, was inappropriate because it produced misleading accident rates. For example, pilots holding Class 1 medical certificates had relatively fewer accidents and higher flight hours. The accident rate profile for a heterogeneous group was influenced by the proportion of Class 1 pilots in that group.
Although rejected and publication-refused by the FAA itself upon receipt in 1983, nevertheless the FAA provided the Golaszewski data to Charles Billings, a researcher at NASA-Ames - not for NASA work, but for his use as a private consultant to several aircraft manufacturers then being sued by EEOC over their mandatory retirement policies. Through Billings, this data then appeared and was incorrectly identified as a NASA-Ames work product in a memorandum prepared by staffers in the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. In assessing this presentation of the Golaszewski data, T. Franklin Williams, Director of the National Institute on Aging, declared:
One third of all reported flight hours for the years underlying the [Golaszewski, a.k.a. Billings, a.k.a. OTA] data were flown in air carrier operations.... No individual over 60 pilots airline flights, and the accident rates for pilots aged 60-69 who hold Class 1 and 2 medical certificates (like those also held by airline pilots) appears to increase in the [Golaszewski/Billings/OTA] analysis. However, that apparent increase is a function of the absence of pilots, after age 60, from air carrier operations, the safest type of flying hours.
When investigative journalist Stone Phillips and U.S. Rep. Jim Lightfoot (R-Iowa), on ABC News 20/20, exposed the false and intentionally misleading presentation of data in the Flight Time Study, Golaszewski himself and FAA Associate Administrator Anthony Broderick appeared on the program. Golaszewski and Broderick failed to refute the debunking of the study's finding.
ppropriation in American history until then. The United States obviously didn’t have enough pilots to fly all those airplanes. After Pearl Harbor, so many reserve officers were recalled to active military service that a sudden shortage of airline pilots emerged.