Main inclusion criteria were age 40 to 69 years at study entry, current FAA medical certificate (Class III or higher), and current flying activity with 300 to 15,000 hours of total flight time.
Participants were part of the ongoing longitudinal Stanford/VA Aviation Study approved by the Stanford University Institutional Review Board. 11, 12 Using data from the ongoing Stanford/VA longitudinal study of aviators aged 40 to 69 years at study entry, we investigated the influences of age and expertise on flight simulator performance over a 3-year period. Longitudinal studies are essential toward understanding the aging process and its interplay with putative protective factors such as expertise. 3 – 8 Thus, expertise may moderate (reduce) the impact of age on occupationally relevant performance.įlight simulator assessments provide objective, reliable performance measures that are sensitive to differences in age 9 and level of aviation expertise, 10 but all of the flight simulator and expertise research to date has been cross-sectional.
Cross-sectional studies of expert performers, including medical technologists, typists, and musicians, have found that expert knowledge may compensate for age-related declines in basic cognitive and sensory-motor abilities in some skill domains. 2 Simulations of occupationally relevant or hazardous activities such as driving are desirable complements to medical and neuropsychological assessments because simulations permit individuals to draw upon prior knowledge and procedural memory relevant to a skill domain.
1 It has been argued that age-based retirement rules are discriminatory and should be replaced with more direct methods of risk assessment. In aviation, for example, an aging workforce coincident with the introduction of jet aircraft appears to have played a role in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) decision for mandatory retirement of airline pilots at age 60. As the workforce ages in an era of accelerating technological advances, it becomes imperative to understand how aging affects performance in the workplace.
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