Cockpit Gray: A broad ruling on age bias

For 37 years Western Air Lines Pilot Charles Criswell had loved flying. So he was glumly anticipating his 60th birthday, the age at which Federal Aviation Administration rules required that he relinquish the flight controls. Unwilling to be knocked out of the sky so abruptly, the pilot put in to be a flight engineer, the second officer on many commercial flights who flies the plane only if the pilot and copilot are incapacitated. But Western had an age- 60 retirement rule for flight engineers too, and Criswell was grounded. Seven years ago, he and two others sued, charging that Western's rule...