About a month ago I flew with AA from LAX to ORD. I was surprised to see a female flight attendant whom I estimated to be mid-70s in age. (Now before you all start shouting at me that I have a prejudice against women in their 70s, allow me to tell you that I am married to one, and that I love her dearly.) A couple of years ago I started a thread on this discussion board about an obese AA pilot, whom I estimated to weigh 175kg. I questioned the man’s fitness for duty. I thought this was a reasonable subject for discussion, but all I got for my trouble was a load of abuse for being an exaggerating liar and for being prejudiced against the corpulent. (I would claim that I was neither of these.) Then, before there was any substantial discussion of the safety issues involved, the moderators closed down the thread (inappropriately, in my opinion) because the subject matter was offensive to some over-weight members.
While I was in USA, I had dinner one night with an international flight captain with DL. I shared with him these two observations, of the obese pilot and the elderly flight attendant. He expressed not the least surprise at either instance. In fact, he astounded me by saying that there were numerous older flight attendants in USA, and that Delta actually had a male flight attendant aged 87 years, who regularly crewed on the long haul from MSP to NRT. I found this difficult to believe, but a quick Google search will quickly reveal both the man's name and photo, and verify his age. According to my informant, this gentleman was not popular with other crew members because he simply could not shoulder his share of the work. My informant told me that while initial testing for fitness for duty in USA was comprehensive, ongoing tests were perfunctory at best, and only checked a limited selection of tasks which some people of doubtful fitness could pass. He said that the airlines were too afraid of litigation based on discrimination to dismiss people, even fairly obvious cases.
It seems to me that this situation is not satisfactory to the flying public, who are entrusting their lives to crew in emergency situations. I’m not sure what can be done about it, except maybe pressure from code share partners or ICAO. Pressure from customers seems fairly useless; certainly my letter to AA about the obese pilot went unanswered. I would be interested in the views and/or experiences of other members.
By way of disclosure, may I confess to being in my 70s and moderately over-weight. Although I am still mentally and physically able, I think it would be ridiculous for an airline to continue to employ me as a crew member at this stage of my life, no matter how much experience I might have.
