Depends on how old the youngest Advanced licensee is, whether or not any of those Advanced class upgrade---and whether or not the FCC changes the regs and eliminates the Advanced class altogether! (Remember, they've done something like that before.)
The
FCC has done something similar only twice.
First, in the 1970s they eliminated the Conditional class. Then in the 2000s they eliminated the Technician Plus class.
In both cases the elimination was handled by changing the license class when the license was renewed or modified. Conditionals became Generals, Technician Pluses became Technicians.
But nobody got additional operating privileges from the change.So hanging on to an Advanced in the hope of a no-test upgrade to Extra is a very long shot. There are no proposals pending to change the way things are.
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As can be seen, the number of US hams with an Advanced or Novice is now less than 10% of the total, and is steadily dropping. AFAIK it costs FCC practically nothing to keep these old license classes separate in the database. So they will simply let time do the job.
Fun historical fact:
The FCC closed the Advanced to new issues at the end of 1952 and reopened it in 1967. IIRC, the reopen date was Nov. 22 1967 (but don't take that as absolute fact). So the Advanced was closed to new issues for 14 years, 10 months and 22 days the first time.
The FCC reclosed the Advanced to new issues on April 15, 2000. As of this writing, it's been closed off 12 years, 10 months and 6 days.
73 de Jim, N2EY