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.

They sent crews to same age to war 70 years ago. They flew in overloaded bombers with basic navigation equipment, with people trying to stop them all the way there and back.

Air conditioned cockpit, good communications, radar, GPS, only the occasional SAM to dodge, what's the big deal?

I know they have passed exams etc and I am sure they are both technically competent but I'm sorry both are too young. He is still a teenager for pete's sake (and looks just like my 15-year old step-daughter's BF!)

For me 21 should be the minimum legal age for an ATPL and 8,000 hours minimum for Captain - or at the very least a combined total of 8,000 hours experience on the flightdeck.

Jet pipe

Experience is something you cannot learn but experience can also lead to complacency so while a Captain without experience maybe more cautious the Captain with experience has to guard against being less cautious
A less experienced Captain may give weather a larger Berth while the more experienced may take short cuts as he can read and interpret weather ahead better and its not just whats on the radar screen

I knew one Captain who could almost smell ICE where it would form, how fast and where it would not form. He was uncannily right and acted accordingly the same with turbulence. he knew how to get out and when to expect it

The low time Captains may not have quite that level of experience but also fly with a touch more caution which probably balances out

GOULI : and the attrition rate was 1/3 , even half on some types in space of 2 years.

On the B17 ops ( well documented) life expectancy per airframe was 13 missions.Roughly half due to the Germans, the other half due to in-flight collisions ,nav errors on way back and attempts to land in bad weather. It was even worse in 1944-45 for the Germans where their fighters attrition rate soared to between 1 and 5 missions per airframe due to inexperienced pilots.

But we are comparing apples and pears . You can learn to technically fly any type of a/c in 50h of sim , the WW2 kids and any MPL today proves it.
You cannot shortcut experience.

I'm sure they're both good at their jobs; after all, they are licenced, and she has passed the command course. However, I'm not sure they should be crewed together.

I agree Herod.

But it's spelled "crude"...

;)

From my own experience, the ones neglecting safety, not sticking to procedures, having bad CRM, having rusty flying skills, being infantile and not taking the job seriously have all been older men often with decades in the left seat. Most of them with experience surpassed by few on this forum.

I ain't buying it!

(My emphasis).

Really? Some of the worse behaviour, I've seen, especially when dealing with Cabin Crew, has come from some in the RHS and the perps weren't always male..but one thing I have learnt over the decades is never ever generalise, because most pilots I fly with of both genders are darned good.

As far as the point of the OP is concerned, the lady has passed the required checks and course so good luck to her...I'm not so sure about the issue of the combined experience level.

Maybe they will scrap the mandatory retirement age just so as to level out the playing field with all other things such as gender, colour, race, disability, obesity, anorexia, apparel, facial hair, religious persuasion, the list is endless. So that we may all say, all things being equal I too can be a captain, with or without time served. Bad thing this seniority list thing, must mean old, grey hair and wrinkles, walking sticks and things alike. I wonder what Sully would make of it all.

Such is the nature of this industry there's a decent chance that she'll end up one day working in BA/Virgin/EK again as First Officer for a Captain who's 5 years younger but is currently an FO in those airlines. It's great to get a quick upgrade and congrats to her but can one really do that short haul job with all those early starts for 40 years?

Not easy to think ahead that far in younger years when most of us subconsciously believe we'll never get old.

In the early 1990's an American cargo outfit had a B707 Captain aged 21. Well done to the young lady at EZ but 26 is rather ancient considering the above and bomber pilots in WW2 for eg.

Good luck to the whipersnappers, that's the way it is these days.
My only worry would be despatching either down the back on a Friday night IBZ or a delay of 6 hours when it all goes pete tongue wrong :ouch:

Sorry Dan Brown but here in the stats you need to be 23 to hold a ATP so your story is suspect?

I stand corrected. The Captain was very young. My memory has detorioted.

Absolutely not a problem for me.

Passengers just need to get re-accustomed to paying more for their flight than their Uber to the airport!!!

Good luck with that one!!:rolleyes:

People get what they pay for. But when they pay for their ticket, they don't care what they're getting!

In my experience, male pilots fell into three groups. Bloody good, mediocre, bloody dreadful. Female pilots only into the two groups at either end. I'm happy to say that the vast majority that I came across fell into the bloody good category.

Doors to Automatic

It is;

Airline transport pilot licence (ATPL) common requirements | UK Civil Aviation Authority

But of course you don't need to have an ATPL to act as a copilot in a lo-co (or anywhere)

You can hold a CPL at 18.

It is not always technical when things go wrong during a normal duty. I find that 90% of times the challenges are with human beings somewhere in the system.

Life experience and years of maturity is often the best tool to sort these problems and challenges to the best outcome, but this is not a subject when doing a Command upgrade.

Good luck to this - i am sure - lovely girl.

Well done on getting the left seat! Nothing remarkable however at 26. I know from previous that it takes a lot of experience to handle a two bar FO, who despite best efforts needs lots of minding, and is better served by senior captains. As a new captain her day out in the left seat is a lot less stressful when accompanied by more senior FOs. Great news story, but humble opinion is that low and low does not work, many airlines make sure they are not a combination! PR over sense?