There is a widely held belief that retired pilots die younger than the general population.
A question that has been argued for years in the cockpits, briefing rooms, remuneration negotiating tables and the watering holes of commercial aviation is; what is the life expectancy of an airline pilot after he retires?
Because airline pilots retire after a career of active health checks, the life expectancy of a 60 year-old retired airline pilot should be much longer than that of a 60 year-old from the general population.
However, briefing room chatter and online forums of the airline industry are happy to argue that pilots die at a younger age than the general population. Every time a retired airline pilot dies within the first few years after retirement, the whole idea that airline pilots’ die early is reinforced. Kind of like a confirmation bias.
The beliefs about premature pilot deaths was tackled by Captain Mike Clarke, a British Airways pilot who did a study for IFALPA, (the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations). Clarke analysed retirement records from 1953 to mid-1988 for 282 pilots across Britain, Canada and Argentina.
The results were a shocking surprise, and caused much conflict in the airline industry. Clarke found that 60% of the pilots who retired at 60 had died by the time they were 65.
In stark contrast, the American National Center for Health Statistics says the average life expectancy for Americans who are 60 years old is 20.4 years. At 65 it is 14.7 years for men and 18.6 years for women.
So it was deeply worrying for 60% of pilots to die within five years of retiring at 60 – to put it mildly. And now, with a current 63 or 65 retirement age – how many will live to 70?
The Clarke study reinforced the belief that airline pilots die early. The question is why?
One reason proposed is that, as a group, airline pilots (and from first-hand experience surgeons) have a hard time adjusting to retirement. The problem is that many airline pilots define themselves, and thus their value, as being captains of their ships, god-like in demanding respect and obeisance.
Fifteen years after retiring, a well-known SAA captain still loves to remind anyone who will listen that he was the commander of the Queen of the Skies – the Boeing 747-400. And so when he retired ,he went from being a Top Gun to a mere pop gun.
Hero to zero is another common self-image problem. Many retired pilots become depressed – and that leads to a significantly shorter lifespan, even if you don’t blow your brains out. Even four years after the trauma of Covid, and the massive SAA pilot cuts, at my regular watering hole there are still burned-out husks of pilots who start drinking at breakfast. I expect them to drink themselves into an early grave.
Pilots’ wives (or husbands) have a particularly torrid time with their retired captains. One famously remarked that since her husband had retired, “She has twice the husband hanging around the house – yet half the income.”
The stress of a high divorce rate doesn’t help matters.
The prevalence of the belief that pilots die early is reinforced by almost every airline pilot having several anecdotes of colleagues who died early after retirement.
The obvious question is what factors associated with being an airline pilot may shorten life expectancy?
Readers Health Warning: This list is enough to drive any pilot to drink.
Apart from being depressed, there are many other reasons to blame for early deaths. Being a pilot means having to deal with physical and emotional stressors that have a negative effect on their health. In no particular order, twelve of the most frequently discussed of these factors are:
- Fatigue
- Cosmic radiation and electromagnetic field effects
- Circadian dysrhythmia; (their body clocks get out of time)
- Depression
- Responsibility for passenger safety and survival
- Loss of career from airline failure
- Loss of job because of professional errors
- Losing your medical.
- Excessive noise and vibration
- Low humidity, ambient pressure and hypoxia
- Airborne sickness and infection
- Bad eating: airline and airport food.
Various attempts have been made to research these specific factors to determine their effect on life expectancy. However, because of the academic requirement for complete anonymity and de-identification, that level of analysis of specific factors could not be achieved.
Despite the alarming findings from Mike Clarke’s study, IFALPA declined to speculate on the reasons for the large proportion of untimely deaths. However, in response to Clarke’s findings, a number of further studies were conducted on the question of pilot life expectancy.
In a notable follow-up study, a far larger initial sample, being 2209 retired pilots and flight engineers, was surveyed. Early and late retirees were excluded from the sample, leaving 1494 pilots who retired at age 60 between April 1968 to July 1993. Comparisons were made with the census of the U.S. general population of 60 year-old white males. (The retired pilots were almost exclusively white males).
Happily, the new research contradicted Clarke’s findings.
It found that a full 50-percent of the pilots in this study’s sample, who retired at age 60, were expected to live past 83.8 years, compared to 77.4 years for the general population of 60 year-old white males.
The study therefore concluded, with typical academic jargon, that the question of lowered life expectancy for airline pilots was not supported by the results of ‘that particular data set’. This second study in fact determined that airline pilots’ average longevity was more than five years longer than their counterparts in the U.S. white male population.
The new study did much to reassure pilots that they should not expect to die soon after retirement. But Item 2 on above the list of things that pilots have to put up with, namely cosmic radiation, is receiving an increasing amount of attention.
Cosmic radiation is high-energy radiation generated in outer space. Organisations such as the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) are increasingly concerned about its effects on flight crew.
On average, around 10 per cent of all radiation exposure of the pubic comes from cosmic radiation.Everybody receives small radiation doses from cosmic radiation reaching the Earth’s surface. But the dose dramatically increases with altitude. The atmosphere attenuates cosmic radiation – so the higher you fly, the more you receive.
It is therefore an occupational hazard that aircrew (and frequent flyers) receive higher radiationdoses from cosmic radiation than the generalpublic, and astronauts receive even higher radiationdoses.
Thus, space tourists can also expect toreceive an increased dose from cosmic radiation, depending on the altitude reached and timespent at altitude. The two astronauts stranded on the ISS because of the Boeing Starliner failures have yet more reason to be unhappy.
Life on Earth is not just proteted buy the atmosphere, but is also protected from cosmic radiation by the magnetic fields thatsurround the Earth.
How much radiation do air – and space – crews receive?
The stats are not very helpful. Less than 1 mSv a year is received on average by aircrewwhere all routes flown do not exceed an altitude of9,000 metres (FL295). But foraircrew flying long-haul polar routes, a far higher 6 mSv a year is a typical radiation dose.
Even that not too serious. For comparison:20 mSv is the limit per year for people who areoccupationally exposed to radiation due to their work, such as radiologists, which other studies have shown to have a shorter life expectancy
A study by the Pentagon has shown an elevated cancer risk for military aviators. The Defense Department examined health records for 156,050 pilots for the period 1992 to 2007 and concluded that military pilots were 24 percent more likely to be diagnosed with cancers than members of the general population, when adjusted for age, sex, and race.
I guess pilots and cabin crew should push their airlines for occupational health compensation.