Not to mention you could still have grandpa flying with a new hire. New hire captain the way things are going.

 

Look at this gem


-Not later than 180 days after the 2 date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report on further increasing the age limitation described in subsection (a).".

 

Yikes!!!!! To infinity....and beyond!

 

This came up with age 65. Pilots wanted to come back and could not without going to the bottom of the list.

 

Looks fake. No reference makes it look even more fake.

 

I don't know that there's any data available that suggests age really has much to do with commercial aviation crashes for large airlines. Applies to both young and old.

Just throwing this out there:

What are the exact ages of the pilots for major commercial airline accidents worldwide for the past few decades?

Air France 447 comes to mind. (CA: 58 FO #1: 37 FO #2: 32). Probably the best test case to look at via the lenses of age. Experienced, not "too old", good training experiences, etc.

KLM 4805/Pan Am 1736. (CA: 50, FO: 42 FE: 48) Pre-CRM, ego issues with the KLM CA, etc.

Malaysia Air 370: (CA: 53. FO: 27) Lord only knows, he ain't talking.

Korean Air 801: (CA: 42. FO: 40 FE: 57)

Go down this rabbit hole and I defy anyone to correlate pilot age to actual major accidents.

(It makes intuitive sense, I agree, but where's the actual data?)

 

Unfortunately, there is no correlation. And, I would submit to you that even if the issue was studied, there’d still be no correlation.
Congress will most likely pass this because it shows they’re working to solve a problem.

 

The CA wasn't in the cockpit, he was in the back on rest. He came back moments before impact. IIRC he immediately recognized the problem but too late.

Ancient history, many things have changed.

Nobody knows what happened, could have been anything pilot suicide to heroic pilots trying to put out a fire. Someday they'll find the wreckage. Might be next century.

Root cause cultural issues.

Hard to say either way.

Exclude everything prior to year 2000 (many industry changes).

Exclude foriegn ops, too many other variables.

What you're left with is several fatal regional crashes. That might correlate to low age and lack of experience. It might also correlate to inherently riskier conditions at the commuters... small airports, worse work rules, smaller, more challenging destinations, etc. FDX and UPS don't look so hot either, but I'd correlate that to working conditions.

 

Fatals are so rare it's impossible to draw any conclusions. It would be best to look at 91K incidents and ASAPs to look for the "senior moments."

 

The difference between 91 and 121 is the training among other things.
F/o"s are typed and expected to have the same skill set as the captain.
CRM is also heavily emphasized in the fact that F/O's are expected to call for or execute a go around if the aircraft does not meet stable approach criteria at the appropriate altitudes.