First of all, even in the dog world, it's never too late to teach Old Butch something new. Oh, sure, he learned easier as a puppy, but it's definitely never too late. In the world of the ground-bound homo sapien not only is this true, but at no time is it truer than when learning to fly. The saying should be, "You can teach old dogs new tricks, but it takes a little longer - and when they learn it, they learn it better."
First, we should probably define old. Then we ought to look at too old (which really doesn't exist and is defined by other factors). Assuming there are no age-related debilitating physical problems that make it impossible to get a medical certificate (there are actually very few of those), old usually is a state of mind having little to do with reality or the person's chronological age. Look around and you'll see people who are old at 40 and others who are young at 80. Part of that is physical, but most of it is psychological. It's a horribly overworked clich� that people who think young are young, but it's true (that's why it's a clich�). Conversely, if you want to make yourself into the oldest person on the block at 35, you can easily think yourself into that position.
Forty seems to be a popular number at which some people start thinking that they are, if not over the hill, at least peeking over the crest. But the only thing special about 40 years old is that it is the age where most folks traditionally start thinking about age. Before that, age is an ethereal concept that only applies to other people. After that, any age that ends in a zero or a five seems to precipitate the comment, "I'm too old to learn."
In the real world of aviation (as opposed to something like Navy flight training, where youth fortunately fogs the true image of one's own mortality) the maturity that comes with age includes some stuff the young 'uns don't have. It's called life experience, and that is made up of a lifetime of incidents, happenings, decisions, and mistakes, all of which give an individual a broader base that enables him to quickly understand new concepts.
Right now someone with gray hair is reading this and saying "Baloney!" They've had run-ins with new-age computer stuff and find some of the concepts hard to swallow. Well, those folks can relax, because nothing in aviation is either new age or even slightly difficult to understand, and none of the important stuff has changed in 50 years. So, whether we're teaching wind triangles or Bernoulli's theorem, the older dogs stand a good chance of having been exposed to something that parallels the subject enough to make it easier for them to understand it.
Younger students may have quicker reactions that allow them to accomplish a task with less instruction, but it is the older student who invariably understands the "why" of a subject better and winds up with a more firmly engrained knowledge. No, old isn't necessarily smarter than young, that's an individual thing. But as the miles build up, so does the background being brought to the learning experience, and that often results in a more well-rounded understanding of the concepts.
Probably the biggest reason people begin to think they're too old to learn to fly has nothing to do with age and everything to do with their energy levels. If there's one thing true about age, it is that it becomes harder to muster the psychological energy required to hammer away at a new problem. Or old problems, for that matter. Gray has barely begun to streak your hair when you find that you're beginning to lose patience with cold weather, inane conversation, and a million of life's little annoyances. As the world grinds away at you, the constant challenges cause some people to get mentally tired. Life doesn't get easier just because you get older and, in fact, just the opposite can be true. This can cause a person to avoid unnecessary new challenges, such as learning to fly, which definitely isn't good.
Doing new things like learning to fly is one of the guaranteed ways to keep the energy levels up regardless of a person's age. The "if you don't use it, you lose it" thought pattern is true, and the more people avoid stepping into unknown deep waters, the more they will find themselves staying closer and closer to the shallows. Eventually the time will come when they won't even dip their toes in. The day you look at a new challenge and a little voice in the back of your mind says, "I just don't have the energy to do this" is the day you actually start getting old. We all know people who are well into their eighties who have projects and wanna-do lists that make it look as if they expect to live to be 150 years old. Those are the same people we picture as being much younger than they actually are.
Just for the heck of it, let's examine (that's a nice way of saying we'll rebut) some of the age-based reasons people think they can't learn to fly. Then we'll run down a list of common ailments and tell you which ones actually will keep you out of the air and which ones won't.
Age
Unless you're an airline pilot, the FAA doesn't care about age, and airplanes don't either (airline pilots are required by law to retire at age 60, but there are no age restrictions on other types of flying). You can be a real duffer (we'll use 85 years old as the entry level to dufferdom) and the FAA medical examiner and the FAA won't bat an eye. Both the medical and actual flight instruction are demonstrated-ability situations: If you can pass the tests, you're in. If you can't, you're out, and that applies across the board regardless of age.
The only instances in which the federal aviation regulations say anything about age are:
- After age 40, the third-class medical is only good for two years rather than three.
- At age 35, and annually after age 40, holders of first-class medicals must pass an EKG (but only airline pilots need first-class medicals).
In terms of flight training, there are no known definitive studies on how age affects the ability to learn. There's a general opinion based on long-term observed trends that it takes longer for someone who is 50 years old to learn than someone who is 20 years old. A longtime instructor at Turf Soaring, one of the Southwest's older glider training operations based in Phoenix, gave us an interesting statistic derived from many years of experience: Assuming a student has no prior flight experience, the number of flights it will take to solo him or her in a glider is roughly equal to the age; e.g., it will take a 15-year-old 15 flights, while a 30-year-old will take 30 flights. This is hardly scientific, but assuming there aren't other health or mental issues, other than it taking longer, most instructors don't see a major difference between older and younger students.
One minor difference observed is that older students are more conservative. This is undoubtedly the direct result of the natural process in which aging teaches you to respect your mortality. When you're young, nothing can kill you. As you get older, you realize that just about everything can snuff out your pilot light.
Eyesight
"Me, a pilot, with these Coke-bottle glasses? No way!"
Yes, way! It can happen. The FAA relaxed its stringent 20/20 requirements some years ago. Today, the standard for a third-class medical requires vision correctable to at least 20/40. Even then, waivers are fairly easy to get if the vision doesn't quite make 20/40.
In almost all situations where your vision is substandard the authorized medical examiner will write a restriction onto your medical that says, "The holder shall wear corrective lenses."
Color vision deficiency is another visual glitch in the road to happy aviating, but a minor one that has absolutely nothing to do with age. You can be stone color blind and still fly, but you'll carry a restriction that says, "Not valid for night flying or color signal control." Again, there are ways to have the restriction removed by passing an acceptable alternative color vision test.
Health problems
Boiling down FAR 61.53 and 91.17(a)(3) to the essential facts, it looks as if common sense is at the core of the way in which the regs look at health problems. Granted, there are lots of stories about common sense not always being a major part of FAA enforcement procedures, but the regs make sense when they say that you can't fly if you have a problem, or are being treated for a problem, that would stop you from passing an FAA physical. This ranges from taking an antihistamine for your allergies to a long list of other drugs, to surgery and even a severely smashed toe. If you can't pass a physical in that condition, or it interferes with the safe conduct of the flight, you are violating a regulation.
Elevated Blood Pressure
These days you don't have to have many years behind you to experience elevated blood pressure. Just being part of civilization can do it. However, it is almost axiomatic that as you age, your blood pressure will trend upwards. The FAA's limits are 155/95, but even if you're hovering well below that, your doctor will probably already have you on medication to keep it in check. However, even if your BP is within limits, chances are the prescription drug that you're taking to keep it there will be unacceptable to the FAA - since most blood pressure meds are, until you meet certain requirements. More on that later.
Do not trade your long-term health for the hope that you'll pass your physical without taking drugs. It's not healthy to be coasting around with 140/90, regardless of what the FAA says. Get it treated, then go to the FAA and find out what kind of hoops you have to jump through to make yourself legal. As a normal rule, it will be nothing more than a cardiac evaluation (maybe EKG and, possibly, a treadmill) to ascertain whether there's been any heart damage as a result of the elevated BP. They just want to know that your ticker is in good shape, which is something you ought to know as well. Flying is important to all of us, but not nearly as important as our health.
There is a specific question on the medical application asking if you are, or ever have been, treated for hypertension/high blood pressure. If no, then all you have to do is check the box "No" and that's that. However, if that's not the truth, you can be opening a can of particularly nasty worms. If something happens and the feds find out you lied on the form, they can and they will come right after your new pilot certificate. So, don't lie.
Another factor in the whole do-I-tell-them-or-not syndrome is the question of insurance. The most likely scenario for the feds to go poking around in your medical history is if you've been involved in an accident. If they find you lied on the form, that means you didn't "...comply with all applicable Federal Aviation Regulations," which is also a line in almost every insurance policy. So, guess what? Because you lied on the medical form, there's a good chance that your insurance is no good.
It's better to talk heart-to-heart with your aviation medical examiner (or AME, a physician who conducts flight physicals and issues most medical certificates) so that you find out the best way to approach any problems, and start looking for a way to satisfy the FAA's requirements - even if you expect some of them to be onerous. Nearly all AMEs are good people and will help you to work it out.
Heart Problems
It seems as if problems with the old fuel pump are a common side effect of aging, stress, and simply being part of the world. When talking about heart problems and flying, however, there are a lot of variations on the theme, and each is treated on a case-by-case basis. In general, however, the FAA is willing to work with you. The trick is finding a doctor who knows the FAA medical labyrinth well enough to help navigate you through it with a minimum of hassle. Be advised, however, the "minimum" of hassle requires some perseverance because, as with all things federal, the tests and paperwork flow become both weighty and sometimes silly.
Having a knowledgeable doctor on your side can make the process flow much more smoothly. If you have this problem, check around and you'll find a number of specialists who not only know the heart but also know the FAA well enough to help you. Simply having an outstanding cardiologist isn't always enough. He or she needs to be FAA-savvy.
At the core of the process is a requirement for you to provide incontrovertible proof that regardless of what heart problem you have, you can prove that at any given point in the time period specified by the FAA between medicals that you'd be able to pass a physical at the drop of a hat. In effect, it is another demonstrated ability matter. Demonstrate you have the ability to meet the FAA's criteria and you're in. Of course, the FAA may ask you to demonstrate that more often by requiring periodic check-ups more often than is stipulated in the regulations for the class of your medical.
We went to Gary Crump, AOPA's go-to guy for medical questions, and worked up a list of heart conditions that will and will not fly (pardon the pun) with the FAA. Remember, every case is different, and one plain-vanilla heart attack may not be just like every other one.
Heart conditions that can be cleared with an FAA special issuance include:
- coronary artery disease
- heart attack (myocardial infarction)
- coronary bypass surgery
- arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation
- valve replacement
About the only heart condition that can't be certified right now is a transplant. Just remember that most heart problems require up to six months of recovery and stabilization as well as thorough evaluations after the recovery period, including at the minimum treadmill exercise testing.
Prescription Drugs
One of the givens about getting older is that we find ourselves carrying around little bottles with cryptic labels on them. Prescriptions can become a way of life. If there's a single area that is both misunderstood and underestimated by the general pilot population, aging or not, it is the area of both prescription and over-the-counter drugs.
Taking certain prescription and over-the-counter medications won't keep you out of the air, but here again, the FAA looks at drugs (and they consider everything right down to and including aspirin to be a drug) the same as it does everything else in the medical area: Will the medication stop you from passing a physical (this includes honestly answering the list of questions) and will it affect the safety of a flight?
The agency has evaluated most commonly available drugs and created an exhaustive list of those it approves for flight. Each of those approvals, however, is based upon meeting requirements that the feds have laid down which either call for further evaluation or restrict the use of the drug in question.
A list of FAA-approved drugs and the hoops you have to jump through for each is available to AOPA members on the association's Web site ( www.aopa.org/members/ databases/medical/druglist.cfm ). The list isn't all-inclusive, especially since the FAA will approve or disapprove a drug on an individual basis, so hundreds of drugs fall outside of the available listings. If in doubt, or the drug in question is not on the list, call AOPA's Medical Certification Department on the Pilot Hotline at 800/872-2672.
We skipped down the FAA-approved drug list on AOPA Online looking for brand names that we might recognize and what the FAA had to say about them. Notice the restriction on the last line for the antihistamine Zyrtec: It's the only antihistamine listed that the FAA clearly indicates should not be used in the 48 hours before flying.
So, are you too old to learn to fly? We'd say no, but you're the only one who can answer that. Go look in a mirror and ask yourself whether you want to give in to the process of aging, or make an attempt at slowing it down. Nothing keeps you younger than a sense of achievement, and nowhere will you find a stronger sense of achievement than in learning to fly.
Budd Davisson is an aviation writer/photographer and magazine editor who has written approximately 2,200 articles and has flown more than 300 different types of aircraft. A CFI for 36 years, he teaches about 30 hours a month in his Pitts S-2A Special. Visit his Web site (www.airbum.com).
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