Anonymous

I feel that the modification of the process for requesting a waiver of the mandatory separation age of 56 for Air Traffic Control Specialists is valid and should be accepted. Life expectancies have risen within the past ten years causing many more people to re-evaluate their age of retirement and to re-evaluate the amount of working years to ensure enough funding for retirement. With the fall of the stock market and the recession that has occurred many of the people who were looking to retire have found themselves continuing to work because they are no longer able to afford to retire. The enforced FAA ATP retirement age is 60 and that involves just as much work as Air Traffic Controllers. I feel that the increase in age should happen industry wide and possibly go even higher than 60/61. Within this issue I also think it is important to rid the documentation of any occurrences within the preceeding 5 years for Air Traffic Controllers. This will not only reduce a lot of time, but cut costs as well. In keeping documentation, this almost puts stress on Air Traffic Controllers to continually have a good record which ultimately could result in negatives happening. No human is perfect and within the industry there is human error. Human error can only be prevented to a certain extent, not eliminated; this re-enforces The Bad Apple Theory.