The retirement age for commercial pilots is back in the spotlight, and older private pilots face insurance surcharges. But is it fair?
Age discrimination is an emotive issue wherever it crops up, irrespective of whether it is applied to protect the young, the old, or operates for the perceived greater good of the community. Where there is an impassioned debate, however, it tends not to be about absolutes – whether or not people should ever be age-restricted – but concerns the age at which restrictions should apply.
Where pilot age is concerned, the rules about licensing depend on whether the pilot flies commercially or privately, and all licences are subject to specified – albeit different – levels of medical fitness.
How the argument is resolved also depends on what form "discrimination" takes. The US Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) has just committed itself to a detailed study to find out whether the insurance industry is justified in loading the premiums of private pilots progressively above the age of 60. Meanwhile, in India the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has now raised the permissible age for holding a commercial pilots licence from 60 to 61, on the grounds that there is an "acute" pilot shortage.
Assistant to the European Joint Aviation Authorities licensing director Dr Joerg Siedenburg observes that, particularly where private aircraft accidents are concerned, the graph depicting the likelihood of having accidents during a lifetime of flying tends to be approximately U-shaped: that is, young pilots have a relatively high likelihood of having accidents, then the risk gradually reduces, and finally it climbs again later in life.
In the AOPA study, the terms of reference are not only whether or not pilots are more likely to have accidents beyond a certain age but – because this is an insurance premium issue – what kind of accidents they have. As AOPA's head Phil Boyer says, they want to know whether old pilots tend to have mostly "fender bender" accidents or if they face a different level of risk of having serious accidents compared with younger aviators. If the latter were true, are older pilots prone to certain types of accident, and if they are, what accident categories are these? The organisation has pledged to study this exhaustively and to publish the results in full, whether they reveal what older pilots would like to hear or not. This is good news because AOPA is a massive organisation with a highly co-operative membership and, in its Air Safety Foundation, it has a safety analysis team with huge experience. Whether insurance surcharges are justified or not, on a community safety level it will be vital to know if, when private pilots have accidents, they harm others or not. If that risk is almost non-existent, flying for older private pilots – subject to passing their medical – should only be a matter between the pilots, their insurer, and their god.
Regarding commercial pilots, Siedenburg points out that a recent major scientific study of commercial pilot health carried out in Germany found that this group enjoy significantly better health than average in their community. Even the much-argued case that pilots, exposed to higher levels of cosmic radiation than other people, must be more prone to cancer was proven absolutely wrong; the reverse was true.
There is also the issue, Siedenburg concedes, that the health of the generation of men and women now in their fifties and sixties is considerably better than that enjoyed by their parents' generation. In the light of this, the Indian DGCA's decision to hike the allowable maximum age for commercial pilots by a year seems eminently reasonable – even conservative. The only tenable argument for not raising the maximum age for a commercial pilot's licence would be that it is valid for aviation authorities to demand that safety levels should be improved by keeping the permitted age the same while average pilot health at 60 continues to improve.
Age 60 is almost a world standard maximum at present. Some pilots would welcome an increase, others decry it. Those pilots arguing against age extension usually do so because they want the right to retire with a company pension at the present limit, but that is an issue between them and their employers. Siedenburg says that the statistics for accidents caused by pilot medical incapacitation is well within the 10-9 probability standard set for other risks. Aviation authorities should either raise the allowable commercial pilot licence maximum age or publish their scientific Transport P12 and General aviation P28
Source: Flight International
