Airline pilot life expectancy

[lederhosen]

The recent sad death of a captain while on duty with American and comments on other threads about the stresses in the job reducing our life expectancy encouraged me to carry out a quick internet search about this topic.

My initial conclusion was rather positive. Pilots start healthier than the general population and tend to have better mortality rates. However nobody would deny that the job has changed and the cumulative effect of intensive short haul flying (such as Ryanair) and or years of ultra long haul (Emirates) does not seem to have been fully taken account of.

The airlines now often treat legal limits as targets. Combine this with long distance commuting, which a lot of pilots voluntarily or involuntarily add on to this and the hypothesis that we are taking years of our lives does not seem far fetched.

The long term BA study and many others are rather dated now. Of course even the more recent studies can only look back and are therefore of limited use in predicting what the long term effect of our worsening terms and conditions may be.

Does anyone have any insight in this area. It would be interesting to know if someone is actively investigating the effect on life expectancy.

[Radgirl]

I am not an expert in this field and I am unaware of any new data, but I have heard a number of excellent presentations over the years as well as some evidence in courts.

The evidence that pilots are healthier must be covered with caveats. Initial medicals exclude those with significant chronic pathology and pilots on the whole are not alcoholics and dont smoke. If we allow for these considerations, life expectancy is much closer to other professions. In addition pilots are often no longer pilots if they develop an illness further skewing mortality and morbidity results.

Pilots are not the only profession to work shifts and to see an increase in their hours. Stress is hard to define and over the last 30 years life expectancy has increased at an unprecedented rate.

Doctors like pilots will complain of increasing hours and workload and stress. More doctors are retiring early blessed by significant rises in NHS salaries and the remnants of generous final salary pensions. But I see little evidence that changes to ways of life, common to much of the population, can be implicated in ill health.

[lederhosen]

There are huge differences in pilot lifestyles. Some still enjoy excellent terms and conditions and indeed many have opted to extend to 65 and not just because they had to. However as a search of similar posts on PPRune shows, there are pilot lifestyles in the middle east, Turkey low cost carriers etc. where pilots are finding the going tough. I too have not found any recent focus on this area or guidelines for employers, which might also be helpful.

[gingernut]

Public health and local authorities do collect and analyse morbidity and mortality data, and equal things for age and sex.

They won't have the richness of data you require and as radgirl says, there are so many other compounding variables.

Maybe worth talking to an actuary ??

[cavortingcheetah]

I've always thought that flying close to the sun in Africa while breathing in the fumes from endlessly rotating Darts was hardly conducive to a long or pleasantly healthy retirement.

[Denti]

Initial medicals exclude those with significant chronic pathology and pilots on the whole are not alcoholics and dont smoke.

The second part is tongue in cheek, right?

From the observation of our anti-skid groups the percentage of pilots becoming alcoholics is roughly the same as in the general population, and as for smoking, oh well, pretty much the same. It just is a bit harder now on them since it was outlawed to smoke on the flightdeck.

From the obituaries in our union magazine one could come to the conclusion that the average age at death for pilots is somewhere around 67. But that could of course be skewed.

[lederhosen]

There has always been a perception that being an airline pilot might be bad for your life expectancy. But the studies I have looked at so far are by no means all supportive of this hypothesis. If anything they suggest that, due to a number of factors, an airline pilot who makes it through to retirement will probably outlive the average person.

The obvious reasons are a better than average starting position, regular health checks and a reasonable socio-economic position. The Besco study of American Airlines pilots in 1994 and the BA study also from around 20 years ago support this point of view.

However the airline world has changed out of all recognition in the mean time. The proliferation of atypical employment has been widely publicized together with junior pilots who start off massively in debt meaning that the financial advantages of previous pilot generations particularly in retirement may not be there. Terms and conditions particularly are generally trending downwards. US pilots have seen earnings improve recently, but after their pension pots took a massive hit.

Forty years of a low cost or middle east carrier lifestyle seem on the face of it to be unsustainable. I suspect only a minority of these pilots will be able to continue with this kind of sustained workload to 65. There are obviously lots of people with legacy airlines who should be in a better position. So perhaps it is more of a question of a two class society.

But overall (and from the response to this topic) it seems there is not a lot of recent scientific analysis of the effect of the more punishing pilot lifestyles.

[Pace]

Pilots like anyone else in society are a mixed bag and experience personal problems like anyone else in society.

On the positive side they are very aware of the need to pass a medical to continue their career and that has positive and negatives.

Positives are that most tend to look after themselves better negatives are that they are more reluctant to report problems to their GP/AME and hence don't do anything until forced too, stick their heads in the sand or run off to alternative medicine.

the Job itself can put pressure on relationships especially if the type of flying takes you away from home and man in a suitcase can make pilots very ungrounded.
Many in corporate aviation seem to be loners and happy with that.

Flying has always been a jumping through hoops occupation but with all the regulations is becoming more so and the flying itself becomes a small part of the total

travelling at high speed we are supposed to be younger :ok: but I bet about a millionth of a second over a life time :E

Oh and a funny observation amongst my colleagues is we make lousy dancers with no rhythm :ugh:
I would also like to see the life expectancy amongst different nations as flying abroad I am surprised at how many continental pilots smoke even older ones

Pace