Political Quotes

“Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman and ranking member for the hard work they have done on this bill. While I have the deepest respect for my friend from Georgia, I have to rise in opposition to his amendment. Clearly great controversy exists regarding the age 60 rule. Therefore, I believe it is entirely appropriate for a study to be done by the NTSB to provide us with some hard data. So far the data that exists leads me to believe that this rule is totally out of date. The FAA's latest study released in 1993 showed that accidents declined to their safest level at age 55 and remained at that level until the age of 63. Now, that study also showed that the highest risk age category was from 24 years old to 39 years old, and it stated and I quote: In all of our analyses, we saw no hint of an increase in the accident rate for pilots of scheduled air carriers as they neared their 60th birthday. Further, accident data collected by the National Transportation Safety Board confirms that inexperience, not age, is the leading cause of aviation accidents. When we really need to know what caused an accident, we do not call the FAA. We call the NTSB. They have worldwide respect in their knowledge of what causes accidents. So it is only natural to ask the NTSB to make this kind of study and report to the FAA and look at it. So why does the FAA insist so stubbornly on retaining this rule?”