Age alone may not be best
method for determining mandatory pilot retirement
BY MIKE GOODKIND
Older pilots do not seem
to perform as well as their younger counterparts on
simulated flight tests, according to a collaborative
study by Stanford University and the federal government.
But the study of 100 older aviators suggests that other
factors as yet unknown might be a better gauge of pilot
safety than age alone.
The pilots -- experienced
amateurs, aged 50 to 69 -- were monitored during a
75-minute flight in a training simulator that tested such
things as emergency maneuver performance and general
cockpit judgment.
"Overall, we find a
significant correlation between increasing age and
decreasing performance on a flight simulator, but there
is wide individual variation -- some older pilots perform
well. Therefore, it behooves us to identify better
screening methods of pilot safety than the crude and
arbitrary measure of age alone," said Jerome
Yesavage, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral
sciences at Stanford and director of the Mental Illness
Research Educational and Clinical Center (MIRECC) at the
Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.
"We may be best
served by measuring pilots' health status, including
mental function, medication use -- and, as they become
available and reliable, genetic tests to measure the
likelihood of the pilot developing performance-reducing
conditions such as Alzheimer's disease," he said.
Yesavage, a licensed
commercial pilot, says he undertook the study because of
a controversial Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
rule requiring pilots to retire from commercial airline
service at age 60. The current study, the first
large-scale performance review of older pilots, appears
in the July issue of the Journal of the American
Geriatrics Society.
Statistically, age alone
accounted for only 18 percent of the variation in
performance. "Obviously, other factors are more
important -- that is, they account for more than 80
percent of the variability of performance among pilots,
and we need to determine how to measure them more
accurately," Yesavage said.
Yesavage also noted that
older aviators have more experience, which brings added
value to commercial pilots who head a crew.
The pilots tested in the
study represented a wide demographic area and varied
health status -- though each participant fell within the
range considered acceptable to hold a private pilot's
license.
Commercial pilots were
excluded from the study since FAA retirement rules would
have eliminated their representation in the study's upper
age group.
Yesavage said his study
was limited because it measured a group of pilots at a
single point in time instead of comparing changes in
specific individuals over time. But he said he plans to
conduct a follow-up study that will look at when
individual skills begin to deteriorate. "Until we do
that, we can't be sure that some younger pilots reflect
higher skills simply because they received more advanced
and modern training," Yesavage said.
Moreover, "we have no
reason to suspect that age 60 is a particularly relevant
benchmark after which pilot skills become unacceptable
for whatever reason," he added. "If we were
drafting new regulations, there is little to suggest that
a younger or older age than 60 is more fair or
realistic."
The National Institute on
Aging and the Medical Research Service of the Department
of Veterans Affairs supported the research. Yesavage's
co-
authors include Joy L. Taylor, PhD, assistant director of
MIRECC's dementia program; Martin S. Mumenthaler, PhD,
research associate at Stanford; Art Noda, database
manager at Stanford's Aging Clinical Research Center; and
Ruth O'Hara, PhD, senior research associate at Stanford.
The simulator used in the
study, a Frasca 141, has been approved for flight
training and skill monitoring by the FAA.
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