When is too old to fly? How many years in the cockpit are too many?
You know how it is. As pilots, we often wear our logged flight hours like badges of honor. More hours? More respect. It’s almost like the high score on an arcade game, where the numbers keep ticking upwards, and the newbie players (or pilots) stand gaping in awe.
But here’s the million-dollar question, or should we say, the many-hour question: Can you have too many flight hours? Or to put it another way, when does a pilot’s senior citizen discount at the local restaurant matter more than the hefty logbook they lug around?
A swanky King Air 350i
You see, I just blew out 70 candles on my last birthday cake. It was a fire hazard. Another pilot friend, flying high at 75, joins me on corporate rides in a swanky King Air 350i. Together, we boast a whopping 102 years of airtime. (Don’t be too impressed; we’ve also accumulated 102 years of bad dad jokes). But seriously, is that too many years? If not, when does it become a case of ‘Hey Grandpa, maybe it’s time to keep those feet on the ground’?
Now, CASA, bless them, are pretty tight-lipped on the whole age issue. Except for those flying for scheduled airlines, where the cut-off is a sprightly 65 (recently upped from a crisp 60). Gossip has it – and it might just be old birds like me chirping – that CASA might push that ceiling to 70. But that’s all in the land of rumors and whispered radio frequencies for now.
At what age is ‘too old’ to fly?
For the rest of us, especially those flying recreationally, CASA doesn’t whisper a word about the golden years. The medical checks remain as standard as a pre-flight checklist, no matter if you’re 25 or 75. Even the ravages of time, like needing glasses to read the small print or forgetting where you parked your plane, don’t factor in much.
Enter the insurance guys. Ah, these folks, with their fine print and fancy clauses, often become the unofficial guardians of age-appropriate piloting. They’re the ones nudging pilots back into the classroom.
Still, even these eagle-eyed insurers aren’t entirely sure how to handle the silver-haired aviators. Some say once you cross 70, you might need a thicker wallet for insurance premiums or might struggle to get high liability limits. But hey, this could be just more gossip at the hangar’s water cooler.
A few years back, a top dog of an insurance firm shared a tale. They’d covered an adventurous 80-year-old flying a fancy piston twin. Tragically, the pilot met with an accident, leading to some serious head-scratching. “Why insure an octogenarian?” cried the parent company. Turns out, there wasn’t any concrete data showing elder aviators as riskier. Heck, an 80-year-old seemed as reliable as a spry 50-year-old with similar experience. The compromise? Hike up the premium for those past 70, even if the stats didn’t quite back it.
Safety studies conducted during the great ‘should we let pilots fly till 65’ debate of 2007 couldn’t pin any performance difference between 60-year-old pilots and their 65-year-old peers. But beyond that age? The stats turn as foggy as a winter morning.
Simulator training for older pilots?
I’ve got this friend, a pilot soaring past 70, who’s upped his simulator training frequency. A smart move, given that my memories of my folks, both cruising into their 90s, trying to navigate the streets of Sydney, are, to put it mildly, hair-raising. Australia does have strict testing for elderly drivers, but if my dad’s ‘daredevil left turn’ was any indication, tests don’t always reflect real-world chaos.
So, when is too old to fly? The pilot crowd is aging, and not enough young guns are lining up for the cockpit. I constantly wonder if I’m becoming the rusty old part in the aviation machinery. But if my recent tryst with new-fangled avionics tech is any proof, this old dog can still learn new tricks.
Every pilot ages differently. Some are cursed with ailments, while others, like yours truly, have been lucky so far. Maybe the real test is when the love for flying wanes, when the early morning take-offs lose their charm, or perhaps when the DAME gives you that sad, knowing nod. Until then, age is just another number in the logbook, right?
