General Aviation Accidents Involving Octogenarian Airmen: Implications for Medical Evaluation

Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance
Douglas D Boyd

Abstract

No upper age limit exists at which general aviation pilots are disallowed from exercising their flying privileges. Operating an aircraft, and landing in particular, requires high visual acuity, cognitive function, and eye-hand/foot coordination; i.e., functions which commonly deteriorate with age. No studies have addressed flight safety of airmen ≥ 80 yr of age (octogenarian+ or 80+) or whether such airmen are more landing accident-prone. This research seeks to answer these questions. Accidents and private pilot-certificated airmen counts were obtained from the National Transport Safety Board accident database and the U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics, respectively. Contingency tables were used to determine differences in proportions. A Poisson distribution was employed to determine whether airmen count (80+ and 30-39 yr) and their accident rates differed over time. Differences in median values were tested with a Mann-Whitney test. The proportion of airmen 80+ years doubled and their accident rate increased (6 and 11 mishaps/1000 airmen, respectively) between 2002 and 2016. Landing accidents were over-represented for octogenarian+ pilots compared with airmen 30-39 yr (31 and 17%, respectively) and did not reflect inferior experience...Continue Reading

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