Advocacy Card
Why a trading card, and why this one
Federal law requires airline pilots to retire at 65. Not because they failed anything — the same pilot is medically examined every six months and assessed in a simulator every nine to twelve months, and can be passing every one of those checks on the morning of their sixty-fifth birthday. Eleven countries already allow airline pilots to fly past 65, among them Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Let Experienced Pilots Fly, Inc. exists to change that. In their words, the industry faces "a severe pilot experience gap, caused by the pilot shortage," and their ask is specific and small: call your Senators and Representative, and tell them to support eliminating or raising the pilot retirement age. The Let Experienced Pilots Fly Act has been introduced in the Senate.
The campaign's founder knows the rule first-hand. At midnight on 29 January 2023, Barry Kendrick's employment with a major airline ended on his sixty-fifth birthday. He was a current, proficient Boeing 777 international captain, his medical certificate valid — and the following morning he could still legally fly under FAA Part 135, in the same airspace, with no age limit at all. That contradiction is what the campaign exists to close. It is also why, when we asked what the front of the card should feel like, he sent us photographs of 777s.
Print details
- ✓Standard 2.5" x 3.5" trading card, landscape
- ✓500 cards in this first run
- ✓Card 01 — numbered as the opening card of the series
- ✓Full-bleed art, front and back
- ✓QR code on the reverse routes to RaiseThePilotAge.com
- ✓Designed and printed by Trading Card Memories
Card 01 — The Traveling Public Deserves the Most Experienced Pilots
A Boeing 767 on short final at dusk, the campaign URL along the bottom, and the entire case on the reverse. Tap it to turn it over.
Tap the card to inspect it in 3D — drag to rotate, flip to see the back.
The argument, in the order they wanted it
The front does one job: earn the pick-up. An aircraft on short final, and a single line — the traveling public deserves the most experienced pilots. Nothing to read, nothing to agree to yet.
The back carries the case. That airline pilots are required to retire at 65. That they can still be meeting every medical, training and performance requirement when it happens. That years in the cockpit build judgment which cannot simply be replaced — and the question that follows from it: when it is your flight, wouldn't you want every qualified year of experience up front?
Then the ask, and the means to act on it. A QR code to RaiseThePilotAge.com, where the campaign asks people to write or call their Congressional Representative. A staffer who scans it is two taps from the Contact Congress page. That is the whole point of putting the argument on a card instead of a leaflet: it survives the meeting.
What the campaign brought
The message was not ours to invent. It was drafted by Barry, argued over by the board, and settled by their government-affairs team before a single pixel moved.
Their Senior Director of Government Affairs set the final order: the rule first, the public's stake second, the QR code third, the call to Congress last. The card follows it exactly.
Barry sent 767 and 777 examples so the front would read as a collectible aircraft card rather than an advertisement.
Supplied scalable, and cleared for use as a background screen under 15%.
Today at the stroke of midnight my employment with a major airline was terminated only because of my birthday. All I did was turn 65, I am still current & proficient to fly as a Boeing 777 International Captain for a major airline. My medical status is current and legal to conduct flight operations.