LATAM Boeing 787-9 near Panama City, Captain Incapacitated

good luck for that eventuality in a Captain Sully tale, ala , US Airways Flight 1549 in to the Hudson! or you might remember United Airlines Flight 232 and Captain Al Haynes and his colleagues arrival to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux_City,_Iowa!

Pretty sure an AI bot/McWii pilot "thousands of miles away in an airline control center" could not duplicate either feat of airmanship.

Alas, a seeming lost art, until it's not.

a very sad truth

Until the EMP anyway.

You know of course that the same undereducated dogmatic (pun intended) fools who took the KungFlu shot will never get the Beagle refrence.

Down-votes for actual data. Why am I not surprised?

Let’s work the problem with verifiable information. Since KK is using seemingly global data (i.e., two data points out of 4 are flights that have no US legs) I will ask for your indulgence when I use US data to formulate a hypothesis and check it. US labor statistics, death rate by age, flight operations per day, etc. are reliable and available. The assumptions made below will deliver the most conservative estimates since I am excluding some numbers. For example, no cargo flights seem to be noted in KK’s data, so I am just using passenger pilots only. Also, I am assuming the pilots in the last two entries expired even though it describes the incident as “collapses” which does not necessary imply death.

Hypothesis: The death rate amongst commercial pilots aged 45 to 54 years is greater than that of the population (regardless of cause of death).

Analysis:
According to the Depart of Labor statistics, in 2021, there were 135,300 “pilots” commercially employed, of which airline pilots, copilots and flight engineers number 87,600 (IDK how many FE’s these days!). That might include cargo airlines, so let’s take 10% out (I did a quick survey of 10 large, mostly passenger airports and found that about 8% of operations are cargo related – unpublished results), which leaves 78,840.

The Pilot Institute estimates 42,948 ATPs fall in the 45 to 54 age group, which makes sense to me starting from 78k in total. Let’s take out 10% to account for pilots that fly cargo (see above). That leaves 38,653 passenger airline ATPs IN THE US.

The expected death rate for 45-54 year old people in the US is 531 per 100,000 (2021 stats). But 2021 was an unusually high number (for some strange reason), so let’s go with provisional 2022 data that saw a 5.3% age-adjusted improvement compared to 2021, so that would make the provisional expectation 503 deaths per 100,000.

You expect 194 pilots in this age group to die in a year from all causes. That would be 4.8 pilots in this age group expected to die in the period KK notes (9-day period).

I am counting every “collapse” as a death, so that indicates 4 died (and 2 of those likely don’t have any relationship to the US data since the flights were entirely outside the US on foreign carriers). But, you say, these died “on the job,” and I am not considering those who died at home, on the road, etc. You are correct, but as noted, 2 subjects are not likely counted in USA data at all, and perhaps even 3 are not (LATAM pilot), so my assumption is you probably have a roughly 1/3 chance of sudden death at home, at work, or elsewhere for this exercise.

So, does the data seem high compared to expectations? No. Does my hypothesis that the death rate amongst commercial pilots aged 45 to 54 years is greater than that of the population hold? Does not seem to.

In a democracy, we all have a responsibility to do this kind of analysis, including my esteemed colleagues KK and dmedders, to ensure we are debating real issues. Democracy requires an informed population. Otherwise, democracy does not work.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456.pdf
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/air-travel-consumer-report-march-2023-and-1st-quarter-2023-numbers#:~:text=Operated%20flights%20in%20March%202023,%25)%20of%20which%20were%20canceled.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/airline-and-commercial-pilots.htm
https://pilotinstitute.com/pilot-age-statistics/
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm

Will you just go away? Why do we need you whackos on an aviation site. We're trying to keep an eye on planes not your idiotic conspiracy theories. I understand there are plenty of places on the web to take your crap.