Time to Retire

When war-trained Willis Heath Proctor started flying the mail for Colonial Western Airways 23 years ago, a pilot was still a glamorous daredevil who put his faith in good luck and seat-of-the-pants intuition. There were no radio ranges, no airways weather reports, none but the most rudimentary of cockpit instruments. Clambering into the open cockpit of an old Pitcairn biplane, Pilot Proctor, swathed to the eyes in fleece-lined flying gear, used to start his run at Buffalo, lug his mail to Cleveland, navigating by landmarks and cruising at 80 m.p.h.

Last week, a greying, balding veteran of 19,000 hours and 3,200,000 air miles, Captain Heath Proctor of American Airlines boarded his four-engined DC-6 Nevada at Newark Airport as businesslike as his trim blue uniform. As the plane droned west at 20,000 ft. and 275 m.p.h., he turned his controls over to his copilot, walked back through the pressurized cabin to chat with his 54 passengers. Three hours and 22 minutes later, his Flight No. 19 rolled to a stop at the Chicago terminal.

Pilot Proctor turned in his company manuals, collected his paycheck ($13,000 a year) and logged his day's flight for the last time. "I don't want to quit flying," he admitted. "No flyer ever will." But Heath Proctor, who had watched the airlines graduate from a risky adventure to a workaday routine, had passed his 60th birthday--the first man on any U.S. airline ever to reach retirement age while still a pilot.

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