On August 25, 2002, I passed my checkride for my private pilot certificate. On October 23, 2002, I received my first Social Security check. I had turned 62 years old on August 22, 2002. Obviously I don't plan on a career as a pilot for one of the major airlines, but I do enjoy flying. I guess the adage, "You're only as old as you feel," really is true.
Mike Gardner
Kokomo, Indiana
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I agree that you're never too old to learn to fly. I started (and completed) lessons for my private pilot certificate when I was 51 and still have the same great 25-year-old as my CFI. That picture on page 35 could have been my instructor and me.
Tom Hurley
Plymouth, Massachusetts
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It is indeed not too late to learn to fly. I got my certificate at age 62 in 1987, and I now have more than 400 hours, including almost 100 hours in my homebuilt airplane. I went to the flight school at Northwest Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan. Go for it!
Jim Lagowski
Williamsburg, Michigan
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Hooray for Budd Davisson for bringing up the topic of flight training for us seniors. Admittedly we're a minority of the training population, but we work just as hard and can be just as committed as our younger counterparts. With our work careers behind us, we may have the time and perhaps the finances to pursue our lifelong dream of learning to fly.
I completed the checkride for the private pilot certificate within a month of my sixty-eighth birthday. My flight training was done in spurts interspersed with delays, including a cancer operation. The flight-training period covered more than two years and the total number of hours - well, let's not talk about that - the objective was to learn to fly.
The topic of continuing medical approval admittedly is an ongoing issue. A bypass operation some 10 years ago required the digging out of historical medical data for submission for the initial Class III medical followed by annual stress test physical examinations. The medical is issued under the FAA special issuance provision and has to be reissued annually. Is it a lot of work? Yes. Is it worth it? Definitely yes. Like a lot of things in life, once a routine is established it's not that difficult to keep it going.
Norman Wagner
Via the Internet
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The killing zone
I just read the article "Low-Time Pilot Danger Zone" (October 2002 AOPA Flight Training) and would like to make a couple of comments. The first part of the article and the graph are a little misleading. It does not take into account that there are probably a lot more pilots in the "killing zone" range. Do you have any information that shows the accident rate per pilot with respect to hours of experience? I think that would be more appropriate.
I also have a comment about the takeoff and landing portion of the article. It mentions a higher workload as a major reason why accidents occur during this time. What about the fact that you are much closer to the ground during these times? I believe that this is a bigger factor than workload.
The article was very good. It made me think about why accidents occur and as a result I will hopefully be a better pilot with this knowledge.
Dan Mercure
Via the Internet
Author Jeff Pardo responds: Certainly there are more pilots in the "killing zone." It might be instructive to factor that out by presenting the statistics for an accident rate, rather than only their number, since there are likely more pilots in that range to start with. But the point remains that this still applies to all pilots.
As to the takeoff and landing phases, trying to factor out the ubiquitous proximity to the ground would be a great subject for a dissertation, but it's rather like the NTSB reports that always say that terrain or ground was a factor in an accident. That may be empirically impossible to evaluate. Yes, if the ground weren't there, there wouldn't have been an accident, but we have to take off and land.
What's more important is the fact that we have discussions like these about better understanding risk, exposing students to a wider range of anticipatory situations requiring risk management skills, and increasing the emphasis on flexibility, internalized in advance, for decision-making. - Ed.
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