Vintage is Just Another Word for Old

Ten miles from my home is an air museum, home for many WWII aircraft and pilots, although the number of surviving WWII vets is diminishing. Several times each year the planes take to the sky – often with pilots well past their flying prime. It is unfathomable to me that anyone believes that an airplane manufactured during the early 1940s is still structurally sound: has no one ever heard of metal fatigue? These vintage aircraft are well-maintained by qualified mechanics, but you can only safely retread tires so many times because the rubber ages and disintegrates underneath the retread. Ditto aircraft.

The pilots shine as they recreate fierce air battles of long ago, maneuvering in the skies above the museum, which is next to the local airport. Bi-planes, fighter jets, bombers, and large cargo airplanes take to the skies and amaze the crowds watching from the sand. However, the faster those old planes go, the riskier the flight becomes, especially when so many of the pilots -- and their planes -- are age 60 and older.

Accordingly, the FAA instituted the Age 60 Rule* that first prohibited all pilots from flying commercial flights upon reaching age 60; however, currently a pilot may continue to fly an aircraft with a younger pilot sitting in the co-pilot’s seat when the primary pilot is age 60 or older. A young fighter pilot driving a plane through the sky at 450 mph enjoys the rush of pushing both his ability and his aircraft to the max, but an old pilot has an old body, which may mean undiagnosed medical issues, slow reaction times, visual misjudgment of distances, mental fatigue, and other problems that create deadly plane crashes, two of which happened this past weekend at air shows.

"Older pilots are crashing in disproportionate numbers," claims Stephen Irwin (20 Mar 2006), based on an AP review of 2000 through 2004 NTSB records related to general aviation, a category that encompasses private, recreational and corporate pilots. Also checked were FAA files covering all pilots.

Among the findings:

Pilots age 60 and over accounted for 23.6 percent of all general aviation accidents even though they represented just 14.7 percent of all licensed pilots. Those in the 50-59 age group were responsible for 26.4 percent of accidents; they were 22.1 percent of all licensed pilots.

Pilots 50 and older were involved in 55.8 percent of all general aviation accidents that led to fatalities, although this group comprised just 36.8 percent of all licensed pilots.

I don’t want to take away from the thrill so many pilots, as well as the public, enjoy while watching these events, but, on the other hand, a 74-year-old pilot pushing a 60+-year-old plane at 400-500 miles an hour less than a thousand feet off the ground at last weekend’s Reno Air Show simply does not make sense to me.
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*The Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) (14 CFR § 121.383(c)) prohibits any air carrier from using the services of any person as a pilot, and prohibits any person from serving as a pilot, on an airplane engaged in operations under Part 121 of the FAR if that person has reached his or her 60th birthday:

"No certificate holder may use the services of any person as a pilot on an airplane engaged in operations under this part if that person has reached his 60th birthday. No person may serve as a pilot on an airplane engaged in operations under this part if that person has reached his 60th birthday."