Hmmmmm, usual load of rubbish here, written by the self centred and uninformed.
However facts seem to support that age and experience equal safety.
It is a fact that the motor vehicle insurance industry offers discounts on premiums to the older driver, but also, importantly to this discussion, imposes hefty weighting to the premiums of the younger driver, especially those who are under 25. Under 25 and powerful and possibly expensive claim / vehicle is just about un-insurable in some parts these days. I wonder just why that is ?.
As far as aviation insurance is concerned, it is also a fact that re-insurance companies that deal with aviation underwriting...(Swiss re, Munich re etc) are becoming concerned at the lowering experience levels in cockpits around the world. Alarmed was the word used in one conversation that I am aware of, when the subject was being discussed in the context of the future aircraft and pilot forecasts being bandied about by Boeing and the Bus company.
Young fellas, who think that they have all the skills required, have been being trained by older fellas who know that they have the skills required, for generations. It isn't going to change. That's the way it is, and that's why we have had continual progression in flight safety over the years. We learn from experience. Statistics confirm that.
The medical industry is telling us that the lifestyle we lead is giving us longer and more healthy life spans (statistically proven) and therefore we are able to work effectively for longer than before. So it begs the question as to why pilots should not be able to continue to hold a medical and work longer than before ???, is our profession so debilitating that it precludes this.
The (aviation) medical profession is saying it isn't, and we can. Insurance companies are saying they want the experience. So I guess the younger fellas will just have to suck it up and get on with it.
Another question might centre around why those younger fellas who are already sitting in right seats, and who on this forum are denigrating the abilities of older captains, haven't seen the light. Those forecasts I mentioned are probably going to mean that they will face left seat conversions in the reasonably near future more than likely anyway. Might it be that their inability to reconcile that age and time in a cockpit (experience), equates to safety, and that lack of recognition of that fact probably makes them, when and if they make it to a command course, a little suspect in the finer points of commanding a modern airliner, and its crew. ?????
I wonder how many of them, in the fullness of time and with more experience, will revisit their views, as stated here, and have the balls to admit that they were wrong, even to themselves.
Last edited by whyisthat; 2nd Oct 2010 at 01:09.