Originally Posted by
aviatorhi
Age and physical condition are not directly related.
Yes, they are. Up until a certain point it's a fairly weak relationship, and there are absolutely other factors, some controllable, which affect your health.
But your physical condition does degrade after about age 20...slowly at first, but the pace picks up later in life. After age 60-ish the risk of sudden incapacitation rises noticeably. Also alertness, stamina, etc falls off too. Eventually there is a very real likelyhood of rapid degradation occurring between exams and sim sessions
Look at the current FAA medical exam standards...the frequency and scope increases at age 40 (EKG, more frequent exams).
While there are probably genetic outliers who could fly airliners safely until age 99, there are several problems with eliminating (or even significantly increasing) the age limit...
- You would have to increase the both the frequency and scope of exams and sim/cognitive testing . Who's gonna pay for that? The hypothetical 99 year old pilot would probably need a full astronaut physical and a PC at the start of every trip.
- Older folks simply will not have the same stamina regardless of health, so rest rules would have to be amended again.
Bottom line the system needs to manage the health of pilots without going to ridiculous and costly extremes. Providing the occasional "genetic outlier" with the opportunity to keep flying way beyond the bell curve is probably not worth the cost and hassle to everybody else.