I have given this thread some thought. In our mob we have 3 retiring this year at 65; one office guy, one team leader and one bloke on the hangar floor. In the 11 years that I have been with the company, I have seen quite a few retire. Some of those have departed prematurely while others seem to go on for ever. I can make no direct connection regarding how long one can expect to live after years of crawling round fuel tanks, handling PRC, Skydrol, JC3 (Yack!!!! to you and me), jetfuel, engine oil and toilet system maintenance, even with health and safety regulations. It seems to me that there may be other factors such as lifestyle that may also have a great effect on how long one can expect to live after retireing. So keep healthy, work out or swim three times a week and keep to a good diet. Oh I forgot, as engineers we don't get the time to exercise and cannot afford the luxury of a properly digested meal during work time, or to buy nice, low fat high fiber foods. Guess we are all doomed.