26yr old Captain - 19yr old Co-Pilot
 

Kate McWilliams is Easyjet's youngest Captain, and maybe in the world.


Meet the 26-year-old airline captain and her 19-year-old co-pilot - CNN.com

Nope, afraid not. There's younger Captains in Ryanair. Regardless of age or gender, well done anyway on achieving a command.

Not even close. I have know many pilots (male and female) in the US who had to wait until the legal age of 23 to upgrade to captain and at least one who took a type ride on their 23rd birthday.

People's Express Had a 23-year-old 747 Captain

Can you offer a name or any other reference for this claim?

More discussion of the topic on PPRuNe and over on a sister forum:

http://www.pprune.org/questions/2566...7-captain.html

Youngest Captain for B757, B767, B777 and B747 - Airline Pilot Central Forums

Atlas had a 26-year-old 747 Captain back around 2002. He's at JetBlue now.

Thoughts on experience?
 

Just playing devils advocate as they're obviously both fully licensed and fully current on the Airbus.

However if he's barely out of school and she's got 5.5 years of experience at most (May 11 to Sept 16 . That's a whopping total of barely 6 years experience on that flight deck.

Bucket of luck and bucket of experience springs to mind...

It was People Express, not People's Express !

Well for INFO I am the oldest Captain in the world! But seriously the age is a meaningless issue as long as the individual can pass the tests and has some maturity to conduct the job well.Well done, Peter.

Stylised as PEOPLExpress.

Recall FedEX had claim to a extremely young left seater when they introduced the DC-10. Can't recall his age all these decades after. Flew to Vietnam with a 27YO in the left seat of a 707 in 1970.

I think a large proportion of us were captianing aircraft well before 26.

The famous Lynn Rippelmayer...

http://www.republictimes.net/site/wp...5559341804.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Rippelmeyer

I am sure they are both very competent at what they do, and that it is all fine . It makes perfect PR ( read and enjoy the article again slowly :E) but is it really wise to pair those 2 like this and expose them to media ?
Leaving school at 17 to go into aviation college and ending up after 2 years of Aviation theory and simulator hours to become the F/0 of an A320 , is technically OK, but putting him under the supervision of a 5 years older Capt with the same cursus ?

I know in Vietnam lots of 19 years old kids flew dangerous combat missions , but that was deliberate ,as at this age one does not ask questions when told to drop napalm on targets if they were civilians around. You do not need experience to do that just technical knowledge. Needs something else to command an airliner with 100+ civilian pax in the back when things starts to go wrong .My view at least.

PS for Jonty : You are right .I was ( like many of us here I guess) "Captain" of a 4 seater at 18, but continued to study and learn. Still learning everyday since... Better pilot technically 50 years later? , maybe a bit, but not that much, but smelling a rat miles ahead and able to say No, you bet !

All part of the plan to dumb the job down. we don't need grizzly hardened pilots to fly our equipment. Children of the magenta are fine.....
Still, the large number of CTC trained entrants didn't save them from the strike vote.

You wouldn't have thought twice about that crew flying a Lancaster to Berlin in '44

Except the pilot was rather old.............

Whoever could have inspired that image...?

________________


H H
"Except the pilot was rather old............." Sadly, true.

HH. True, but then a certain amount of loss was expected as military ops usually do. This is civil peace ops so has no relevance.
Actually, good on the pilots concerned but i don't have to like the overt publicity machine running riot or a reduction of the total experience up front when they are working so hard in the summer.

I guess technically it may be a valid statement.

Gender: Female
Age: 26 years (On the day this news got published)
Plane: Boeing 737

Is there any other female Boeing 737 captain younger than her flying today?

One of the ''responsibilities'' of a cpt is to have a wider comfort envelope than the fo. This is the area where the fo grows his own experience expanding his own comfort zone. Automation, ATC environment, strict adherence to SOP and company policies have made it difficult to grow a comfortable skillset. But, it 's all good until you get uncomfortable.. (AirAsia 8501, Asiana 214, Emirates 521, AirAsia 223, etc)

It's come to a point where actual flying of the a/c makes you look like an alien!
Knowing this would make me uncomfortable getting onboard as a pax.