ZapBrannigan

Yup. I think people forget that.

Got a 2 year aviation degree? 1250 hours
Got a 4 year aviation degree? 1000 hours
Military pilot? 750 hours

4dalulz

Exactly, stop living vicariously through your job. Find a hobby (mind numbingly boring GA flying is not a hobby).

chihuahua

30 years of mostly poor sleep and inconsistent sleep schedules with constant interruptions of the circadian rhythm from switching multiple timezones and never getting acclimated before flying back and doing it all again without being able to acclimate will do that. I'd be curious to know how people who retire from SWA or a regional do, since they generally stay in the same area and mostly get to sleep at night and are awake in the day, like you're supposed to be.

Al Czervik

I would too!

ZapBrannigan

Although SW doesn't fly redeyes, and the vast majority of the route structure covers only 4 time zones, they have been adding more and more flying to the "shoulders". It's not unusual for east coast push times around 5am local. For someone with a west coast domicile, that could mean a midnight wake up for a 2am push according to their body. Same on the other side of the clock with west coast arrivals at midnight or 1am - 3 or 4am for an east coast pilot.

While it lacks the true round the clock nature of global flying and pure redeyes, I think it is probably nearly as exhausting with similar health consequences.

BoilerUP

That study is an extremely small cohort, likely looked largely internatoinal pilots (given it is limited to the UK, Canada and Argentina), and perhaps most importantly, used data from 1953 until 1988.

hopp

Please consider the source… Don’t give this so called study any more credit that is really do. It was a very narrow sub-set of a study of foreign (not American)
pilots from Argentina, England and Canada, from 1953- to 1988! Not so relevant to modern first world pilots who’ve had a lifetime of healthy living with access to first world health care.
Mostly everybody smoked in 1953 and the no smoking rule on flights had not been commenced in 1988.

So called study was sponsored by a European Labor organization, not a medical society.

I always am cynical when I read such cherry picked statistics put out by a lobbying group. Who does a study of Canadian, Argentinian, and British airline pilots only?

My dad, would have been included in this age demographic. He retired from airlines in 1985, and passed away at 86 years old.

Andy

I couldn't get the original link to work. This one did: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/60-28...ied-john-hoyte

Note that he's comparing current life expectancy against 40+ year old data. Life expectancy 40 years ago was less than today.
There's really nothing scientific about using such stale data.

TransWorld

What was the average life expectancy in the US in 1900? Age 46.

Moonbeam

Not sure, but I thought life expectancy is going down in the US. I think it fell by 2 years to 76 years of age. Apparently people aren't eating kale and avocado toast