Is it age or is it performance we should look for?
Let me first state, that the way "lambourne" is performing in this thread is way below anything, i´ve expierienced in my lifetime. It is far away from any intellectual form of discussion with lots of personal agitation against older people, very similar to racism in its worst way.
I would not let my loved ones fly with such a person and i´m sure, there will be paybacktime some deay for such behavior in this world or the next one.
It is even worse, that due to this behavior the discussion lacks the necessary participation of knowledgable people (congrats to those who have not been offended off till now) to discuss the necessary points in regards to safe flying.
Let me also state, that i see no necessity in increasing the age limit to 70 (there are enough pilots out there who should be able to do the job), and it might get a safety issue due to degrading capabilities of body and brain.
It is out of question, that physical abilities degrade with increasing age. Therefore military pilots are phased out of active flying duty long before the age of 60. In my carreer i had to take checkrides (instruments and tactical) with young and unexpierienced pilots, with expierienced pilots and with old and expierienced pilots. The oldest one was 58 with lots of hours and lots of expierience, but his performance got worse from year to year. And i had a hard time to get his ear concerning his lacking decision- and handling abilities caused by bad eyesight and slower reaction time.
That is most probably not that much different to civilian aviation, the body and brain gets old regardless who is handing out the paycheck. In a functioning CRM environment there is probably lots of room to equalize such unwanted aging effects (tradeoff of expierience) up to a critical point, when it gets a safety issue.
The question being, who in aviation is defining that point? The standard medical? I don´t think so, as long as it is not focused on special items. And as long as you can choose your own familiar doctor, there is even missing some objectivity. A flight physical examination and training (like we had to do on a regular basis) could do it, but there is none, at least i dont know of one. Your employer kicking you out on hearsaying from the FO´s? The lawyers and courts will have high time and lots of money would be spent in fighting those layoffs. Busting Check-Sims? Come on, with year-long expierience it is easy to do those sims, and it is not the real world and no people behind your seat, you prepared for it, you slept well before and read some books. With luck your checker is well known to you. You could even arrange a simride before the actual checkride. The old pilot itself? Some sure will know their limits, but some will not for the obvious reasons (money, love of flying, ....you name it).
So at my present age of 57 i neither enjoy flying as a passenger with the young FO, who is paying his line training at the moment nor seing the captain of the flight some considerable years older than myself, regardless of his expierience.
I think this discussion should focus more to the question, wether there can be procedures installed to ensure, that pilots regardless of their age meet all necessary safety-standards not only for flying from A to B, but also being able to bring the people back when those few minutes of horror interrupt the long hours of boredom. And when the sh*t hits the fan, CRM might bring you nada and the left or right "seater" might have to handle such a situation on his own.
If those procedures are developed, installed and respected, we dont need to talk about an age limit any more.
And "lambourne" would probably not be eligable to flying passengers around the world with such an attitude.
franzl
Last edited by RetiredF4; 15th Aug 2010 at 13:37.