Airline pilot life expectancy
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.
Last edited by lederhosen; 7th Oct 2015 at 08:31.