"I don't have the time to read the rehash of this topic. A checkride and a medical certificate is all that is required to continue flying. the crap about sudden incapacitation ( it happens most often to 48 to 52 yo ) number of wives etc is a smokescreen for greed. I'm 65 and I will retire when I feel like it.
Whether or not you young pilots like that------I don't give a ****."
gcap,
The sudden incapication is a red herring for both sides. It is generally a rare event and for the average pilot, it will happen at some other point during the 8760 hours in a given year.
A slow, subtle mental degradation of abilities and thinking is more of a threat along with resistance to fatigue. I've seen it in the cockpit and with family, friends and neighbors.
Pointing to the ability to pass a medical and checkride in the USA is the ultimate joke to justify your stance. You know very well that FAA AME's are chosen by pilots, not the other way around, and are very poor in judging the effects of aging on pilots. The typical geriatric pilot is going to pass the the physical at 10 am after a good nights sleep and a nice breakfast. Add in an eye chart memorization and it's back in the air for another 6 months unless the guy is really senile. I'd love to see the AME observe Mr 63+ at 2:00am in weather after a 14 hour duty day. I have, and in the majority of cases, it's not pretty. Fatigue is one issue ignored in every study.
Sim checks in the US are another joke. Usually they're done at reasonable hours with a buddy of 20+ years or by a company collecting a pretty sum $$$ for continued corporate support.
I've flown bizjets with 60+ pilots and the majority showed the effects of fatigue far quicker than younger pilots. In airline flying, the close to age 60 crowd showed the same bad effects. Lately, I've even seen a few 60+ copilots who are generally slower in every way. Even reading a checklist and moving the eyes to the overhead panel there is an obvious delay.
Some oldsters can run marathons and out think young pups until they die in their late nineties. Most can't. The aging process is uneven and difficult to measure, especially in the lawsuit happy USA. We have arbitrary measurments in every facet of civilized existence, deal with it.
I won't worry about you flying over my house at 10 am on a good weather day. I will be concerned at 3 am with thunderstorms in the general area.