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WEDNESDAY, Feb. 28 (HealthDay News) -- A new study of aging U.S. airline pilots questions the notion of mandatory retirement for workers, experts say.
The study found that any "skills gap" between pilots over age 60 and pilots in their 40s narrowed as years passed.
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The study, by a team at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., suggests that age-based restrictions on work be abandoned in favor of competency-based criteria.
"Don't draw a line in the sand about age, just test competency," advised Dr. Joseph Sirven, an associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Phoenix. "If you can do it, and you're reasonably healthy and you can complete the job, that's the key."
Since 1959, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has set the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots at 60. Last November, the International Civil Aviation Organization raised its mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65 -- provided a second pilot under 60 is also present in the cockpit. In January, the FAA announced its intention to follow suit.
Stanford researcher on aging Joy Taylor wanted to understand how age actually affects cognitive performance, not just on a simple written test but in the real world. So, Taylor and her team tested 118 general aviation (that is, non-commercial) pilots between the ages of 40 and 69 in a flight simulator over a three-year period to measure their performance in a battery of flight-related tasks such as traffic avoidance and communications.
The study yielded three major findings. The first was that, at the beginning of the study, the older pilots (aged 60-69) performed consistently worse overall compared to the younger pilots (aged 40-49).
Second, and not surprisingly, the more highly skilled pilots performed better in the simulator than did less-skilled pilots. "Pilots who went on to get the more advanced flight ratings perform better overall, regardless of age," Taylor said.
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