All respect, this guy is was ~91. I’m uncomfortable driving with my mom. As a total layperson, what sort of tests does a person have to pass annually(?) to maintain a pilot’s license? Or is this dude just so O.G. that he was bound to go out living his dream?
I saw the headline earlier, and my first thought was "I hope he was the pilot, because that would be a fitting way to go for a legend." Not only was he the pilot, but he was flying solo at 90 years old.
I hate this reasoning. Why is this a fitting way to die? What would be a fitting way to go for a cook or an athlete then?
Because an unfitting way to die is to be stuffed with tubes, half conscious in a bed, shitting your pants uncontrollably. The perspective of dying lying helpless in a hospital or care house is not very appealing to people who had an active life.
Dying in a last scream of fear, angst and struggle regretting a thousand things that may have gone wrong or maybe were just your fault, without having the chance to tell your loved ones how much you love them, and being remembered not only by the incredible flights where no one had gone before, but finally and uttermost by the one that ended your life which will be replayed endlessly in the internets.
Not sure what would be fitting to be honest.
I'm going to visit someone who is having it worse, in my opinion.
He's slowly deteriorating from Alzheimers. He won't acknowledge it and has become seriously grumpy. He used to know everyone in his town. He was a good guy. Now, everyone thinks he's an asshole. Everyone who didn't meet him before he started this decline has had a terrible time with him. He curses all the time.
Last week, he forgot to shut off the gas and was found unconscious by the fire department. Now, he will be in a care home against his wishes until the inevitable. This is not the first incident where police had to be phoned, either.
So he's gone from a week liked, active member of the community to being the grumpy old guy that the authorities have to be phoned about in just a couple of years.
I'm going to go see him for a final farewell later this month, I hope he recognises me.
Dying from Alzheimer's is truly terrible. From what I understand, in your final moments the neurons that move your lungs and beat your heart will give up, which is usually the end. And it's not the kind of opioidic kind of forgetting that you have to breathe either. It's pure struggle 'til the final moment.
Back in school I had an art teacher whose father went that way, and it was clear that he was extremely traumatized by witnessing that.
My condolences.
There is zero risk of this astronaut being primarily remembered for how he died.
Dying in a last scream of fear, angst and struggle regretting a thousand things that may have gone wrong or maybe were just your fault…
I think you’re projecting. I didn’t know him obviously, but from what people who did have said about him, that doesn’t seem like the way he’d go out.
Or maybe the final moment was a sigh of acceptance and gratitude for the live he lived. Nobody knows but him.
We might be different types of people (your comment about regret strongly suggests we are), but I've been in some very hairy situations where I was fairly sure I was about to die traumatically and I didn't experience any of what you're suggesting. Instead it was a calm resignation or acceptance that was oddly peaceful.
Not that I don't want to live, but I don't fear death and would take the plane crash over wasting in a hospital any day. I have a DNR registered with the health service in my country to make sure that never happens.
What would be a fitting way to go for a cook or an athlete then?
Whatever they liked doing? Being an astronaut at that time implied that he was an aviator. Keeping his licence to fly into the old age of 90 means he most likely loved flying. That is why it is a “fitting way to die”.
I don’t know the cook you mention. Maybe they loved cooking for loved ones. In that case a fitting way to die would be while they are doing that. But maybe it was just their profession, but what made them enjoy their life was watching musicals in the theatre. In that case a fitting way to die would be them dying after watching a great performance on their way out of the theatre.
Maybe it would help if we would contrast this with an “unfitting” way to die? Let’s take the same cook who loves musicals. If she were to try to climb her roof to fix a leak (something she never before professed to care much about) and they slip and fall off the roof. That would be an unfitting way to die.
Dying is probably painfull, scary and confusing in many cases. But the circumstances surrounding it can make it worse or better. Dying in an accident doing something you always hated is worse than dying in an accident doing something you loved.
"Dying in an accident doing something you always hated is worse than dying in an accident doing something you loved."
Dead is dead, though. I do not think the final moments matter as much as all the years before them. So even if I will one day die on the toilet being old, that would be way better, than me dying soon in an climbing accident, even though that sounds more dramatic and I am way more into climbing than toilets.
He was 90. You're reading too much into it. It's like when people get angry about a "Bless you."
Did I sound angry? I was just adressing the point that some people seem to value the circumstances of their death more, then the years before that. Wiliam Anders did what he wanted, fine by me, unless he actually was not fit to fly anymore (as this endangers other people), but no one had the guts to tell him that, being a national hero.
The expression is a social game to respond to death. It’s not real. We are not happy how he died. We are happy the way he lived. The game is to invert and mix the two. It’s a form of cognitive dissonance to manage our emotional response so it is positive not negative. You may not feel it yourself which is fine but appreciate that’s what others are doing. It’s not meant to be logical. It’s meant to be illogical.
Dead is dead, though. I do not think the final moments matter as much as all the years before them.
Well indeed. How many people give up what they love because of the fear that it will kill them? This man kept his love for aviation alive until the end.
I do wonder if perception of time changes as you die — maybe those last moments feel oh so much longer, and you experience them as another lifetime (part of why afterlife descriptions of near death can be so rich). Like ST TNG The Inner Light episode.
As a mathematician I'm going to fall on a slide rule and poke my brain through an eye socket.
Yeah doesn't work does it.
Choke on chalk, nerd!
Or maybe have an aneurysm trying to remember some latex command.
Oh hell that last one got me. Now how do I do that equals with two bars and a squiggle ... ERK ... THUD.
Probably would have been better if I had instead suggested figure formatting and page layout… I think I’ve come close to stroking out over that…
Oh don't. I spent an hour yesterday trying to get a damn table to stay on the right page.
He went out on his own terms subject to the rules of the way he lived. No excuses. It may not have been his intent to die but he was willing to take the risk. That is the price of true agency.
When you are prepared to die in a plane crash because of your decrepitude, how much risk to others is entailed in a case like this? If the plausible answer is “not that much” I am with you. But nonagenarian self-actualization at the cost of other people’s lives and limbs is a different story.
The risk of dying while flying in a light plane is reasonably high.
The risk of dying from a light plane crashing into you while you are on the ground is negligible.
The medicals for pilots are exhaustive and frequent, so you can be assured he was probably in better health than the majority of the population.
Most people die painful and slow deaths in a bed surrounded by people they don’t know, or most likely entirely alone. Almost nobody dies peacefully in their sleep, it’s usually some horrible disease or failing bodily function.
If you’re going to die a “fitting” way, it’s going to be because you took your life passion to the extreme.
Most people die at home with family. Only certain over-medicalised countries have a preponderance of the elderly dying in hospital.
athlete
Something like cycling down a mountain and dying from a lack of decreasing elevation.
Maybe doing what they like the most, and taking all the risk/responsibility that comes with it.
Probably falling into an industrial sized fryer or getting a tennis racket wrapped around their neck, respectively.
My take is that he passed doing what he clearly loved: flying. He made some of his greatest achievements in life while in flight and was still flying during his final moments.
Different lifestyles, and different deaths, have different glory and honor attached to them, whether you like it or not.
Being an astronaut that went to the moon and a pilot that dies flying at 90 will always and forever be cooler and more impressive than a cook, and most athletes too. I love this reasoning.
What a legend indeed.
Godspeed, Bill. :salute:
I hope he was the pilot
Which was how Gagarin died btw.
He was flying a vintage T-34 Mentor, a pretty bad-ass craft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Anders
He took the Earthrise photo, which Nature photographer Galen Rowell described as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise
The shutter speed was 1/250th of a second, so the earth rotated about 4 miles or 6 kms while the shutter was open. Not enough to blur the photo obviously, but crazy to think about.
I’m confused. Does this math check out?
Circumference is 24,901 - so about 1000 mph at equator.
1000 mph / 3600 s / h = 0.27 mps
0.27 * (1/250) = 0.001 miles?
Doing this math on my phone but am I missing something here?
I think it's relative and phrased poorly, since the orbiter has to circle the earth at a certain faster speed. But quick googling shows Apollo 8 was traveling about a mile a second?
I got the same answer
I think the parent comment was confusing/misremembering the rotational speed value in miles per hour as miles per second.
You are correct. Using GNU units:
$ units '2 * pi * earthradius / day * (second / 250)'
Definition: 1.8532517 m
Even if we stretch out and look at how fast the Earth orbits the sun, it still doesn't explain the 4 mile figure.
Earth's orbital speed: 66,200 mph
66,200 mph / 3600 s/h = 18.38 mps
18.38 * (1/250) = 0.07 miles
If the orbital period was 80 minutes then that is 1/1,200,000th of a period and with Earth's circumference being ~25,000 miles that should only be about 0.02 miles.
Or if the orbital velocity was 17,000 mph and neglecting the height of the orbit, 17000 / 3600 / 250 = 0.018 miles.
So either way, about 100 feet.
It was taken from the moon, not low earth orbit.
I have no idea how to calculate it, but I interpreted this to mean not that the earth rotated (which everyone is trying to calculate) but that the earth was crossing the horizon of the moon such that four miles of earth crosses the horizon during the shot causing earth blur for a moon-stable reference frame.
Revolved I think would be the correct term for that.
rotation:
360/86,400=0.0041667deg/sec
0.0041667 * 0.004sec = 000016667degR
circumference:
2pi * 6371km = 40,030km
land covered by rotation:
40,030 / 360 = 111.194km/deg
0.000016667deg × 111.194 km/degree = 0.001854 km
km to m:
0.001854km × 1,000 meters/km = 1.854 meters
more like 0.001 miles. ... oh, woops. I see your answer is in kms.
it was something like 0.46km/s.
He took the Earthrise photo, which Nature photographer Galen Rowell described as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise
Heh. I'd never read/heard that quote before. But no one's photos have touched me more than Galen Rowell's, so it bears an incredible amount of weight to read.
Thank you for sharing it.
I don't know how true this story is but here is one version of the creation of the photo.
https://www.coquelicot-translation.com/picture-earth-earthri...
Wikipedia links to a nice visualization on youtube of the moments when the photo was taken, synced with the recording of the actual conversation of the Astronauts as recorded by the Apollo 8 equipment:
"calm down, Lovell!"
That's a fun listen.
Joni Mitchell sings on her 1976 song "Refuge of the Roads": "In a highway service station / Over the month of June / Was a photograph of the Earth / Taken coming back from the Moon / And you couldn't see a city / On that marbled bowling ball / Or a forest or a highway / Or me here least of all …"
Great lyrics
Died at 91 flying his jet. What a badass.
Godspeed.
nit: the T-34 Mentor is a propellor plane
When you've ridden a Saturn V, the difference between a jet engine and a prop engine becomes immaterial.
I'd be surprised to see a pilot endorse that
Developers are such on-the-spectrum nitpickers. I guess that is what makes them good at their jobs and such unenjoyable cocktail party companions.
Is it even a nitpick in this case? It would have been substantially more badass to die flying a jet at 90. If it's relevant to the point I don't see how it's a nitpick.
Now picking on a particular model distinction or something like that I could get on board with.
It depends on what you mean by “jet.” There’s no way he’d be allowed to fly a fighter jet or anything else with a turbojet engine at this point in his life. The medical waiver he was on wouldn’t allow it.
so many fails in such a short response. Assuming someone's profession based on almost nothing, general stereotyping, armchair mental diagnosis, insult based on 'diagnosis' that's needless and honestly irrelevant. Reminds me of the common backhanded insult on reddit, "you must be a blast at parties"
What kind of pilot would be taken seriously if they mix up such a basic aspect of professional knowledge? Jets and prop planes are very different beasts.
I can't think of any job where you can just casually mix up different classes of objects and not eventually have it result in some significant failure.
"Why did you feed the mules and not the horses?" "Don't be so autistic. I bet you're a blast a parties"
"Why did you give me cheeseburgers? The customer ordered plain burgers." "Don't be so autistic. I bet you're a blast at parties"
Yes, being specific about the things you work with is generally a sign that someone is good at their job, but it generally doesn't have much to do with autism. But I guess being condescending is what makes a good cocktail party companion?
You must be a blast at parties.
Says the one who managed to insult autistic people and engineers at the same time?
Many of the best partiers I know are on the spectrum.
You guys dress poorly too.
Dare I bite: Why?
Once you have ridden a rocket, everything else seems slow:
Turboprop, I guess you are both basically right
Only the T34C is a turboprop. It appears Anders had a T34A which is equipped with a piston engine.
Turboprops are not jets, it is the wrong term.
A turbine engine may be a jet engine or it may not in the case of a turboprop.
Jet aircraft use jet propulsion not propeller propulsion.
A jet gets significant thrust from exhaust gases, a turboprop gets almost none from exhaust gases, some turboprops actually are reversed intake in the rear pushing exhaust out the front like the PT6.
Turbofans are considered jet propulsion as the both the exhaust gas and fan gas are pushing though an exhaust orifice rather than the fan being in open air as is the case with a turbo-prop.
You are correct and no offense taken at all. Thank you for the additional detail.
Was he doing loops/flips intentionally, or did he lose control of the plane? Either way, what an absolute legend to be flying solo at his age.
Intentional loop. He entered it too fast and too low. On the descent, he was going too fast for his aircraft to have any type of control authority and he was a passenger at that point.
The aircraft basically stalled out in a dive, and with no cohesive airflow over the control surfaces, the aircraft continued to stall to the point of impact.
What could be the reasons for this? Misread the altitude? Sudden wind?
Barring a pre-crash sequence mechanical failure, this was pilot error. There is a safe speed called Va, or maneuvering speed. While most aircraft will have higher maximum allowed speeds, maneuvering speed is the most important figure for aerobatics because it's the maximum speed at which the airplane's flight controls can be used at full deflection (i.e. maximum effort) without exceeding the structural capabilities of the aircraft.
What most likely happened was was a loss of situational awareness in the pre-loop dive, resulting in a steeper and faster dive than intended.
Wouldn't be altitude since it was at sea level, but maybe air pressure due to temperature? But, at sea level, seems like he'd be cutting it way too close regardless.
No.
That's just... such a marginal thing. It's like complaining your supercomputer melted because the CPU got 0.1C too hot. Like - it's technically possible, but if it's that close you were already way way way past safe and sane margins.
When doing loops there are rapid changes of acceleration, specially on inverted loops. It can make you pass out easily, even if you are young. Being 91 years old, I would be extra careful.
I don't believe the wing was in a stall in this situation. There would have been an abundance of airspeed over the wings. While performing a Split S the issue is that you are pulling too many G's and you and the sooner you level out the more you are pulling.
Over the wings in which direction, though?
That's one hell of a way to go out, especially at 91. On brand for an astronaut.
An absolute legend going out like a total badass. I know people will disagree but there is much to be said for living your life on your own terms and accepting the potential consequences without reservation. He was clearly one of those guys. He probably did not expect to die that day, but he knew he would die some day and he wasn’t going to nerf his life to buy a few more years.
My grandad at a ripe old age had a stroke and the doctors told him and the family that he won’t ever be able to walk. So he got a wheelchair and was eventually sent home to recuperate. A few days later my mom visited him and found him wheeling around in the wineyard. It seemed that my grandad (her dad), ever the engineer, pimped his ride to make it more off-road worthy and was in the process of figuring out how he can continue with yard maintenance in his new state.
My mum was very angry with him. From her perspective her dad was “risking his life” doing what he was doing. I tried to gently point out that while she is right that staying in bed would be safer for him, wouldn’t he be one step closer to the grave if he were to give up on his favourite activities?
> I tried to gently point out that while she is right that staying in bed would be safer for him, wouldn’t he be one step closer to the grave if he were to give up on his favourite activities?
More than one step closer! Being bedridden is usually the beginning of the end. Once you can’t even get basic exercise done, everything starts to degrade rapidly.
Good for him! Living is not the same as existing.
"A ship in a harbor is safe but that is not what ships are built for"
This is precisely why I have elected to put off my riskier hobbies until my later years. I find my tolerance for risk goes up as I become less instruyan in the lives of my loved ones. One day, I’ll feel free to take the risks implicit in my stupider ambitions.
If you make it that long
I wonder if something happened and he knew he wasn’t going to make it, and so crashed intentionally to avoid the possibility of hitting something when the fuel ran out. There are so many little islands in that area, and he could have plausibly ditched in the water, however cold it would be. Badass yes.
Reminded me of the film Secondhand Lions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondhand_Lions
But would you "net your life" to buy a billion years?
Since there’s a lot of commenting about his age, I’ll remark (as a 36-year-old private pilot) that in my opinion an elderly man flying recreationally is actually much less hazardous to the general public than an elderly man driving a car.
Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving.
It’s not as if there’s any chance you’ll run over a 6-year-old who jumps out in front of your plane at 7,500 feet.
Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving.
Respectfully disagree (as a 40-something year old aerobatic pilot) with the less sustained focus part, not the specialized skill part.
I'm not a pilot, but I have a bit of a morbid fascination with aviation incidents, and I think I agree with both of you somewhat?
The average flight deck is a hell of a lot more complicated than the average driver's seat in terms of things the operator needs to pay attention to, so I'd definitely say that flying requires more sustained focus. However, during routine flight (not counting taking off and landing, because I know those are very high workload periods?) pilots have a lot more time and space than drivers do to recover from a situation before it becomes a catastrophic failure, especially when it comes to danger to others outside the vehicle. So I'd also say that driving on average requires better reflexes and reaction times to prevent accidents.
Take collisions for example; as GP alluded to, a driver's window to recognise and start responding to a developing problem is often mentioned in fractions of a second or a few whole seconds at best, because they can come out of practically nowhere. On the other hand, my impression of warning systems like TCAS and EGPWS is that the pilot has several seconds or more to start responding to the initial warning and still safely execute an avoidance/escape manoeuvre.
Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition. Things like spatial disorientation and losing situational awareness (particularly in IMC), not taking into account a changing weather situation, not tracking fuel consumption, navigational errors...
Technology is increasingly mitigating these risks, but as of now, they contribute to general aviation being significantly more risky, statistically, to its participants than driving, even when taking into account the prevalence of bad driving. On the other hand, it is considerably less dangerous to non-participants than driving is.
Aviation contains a number of scenarios where pilots can (and do, not all that infrequently) slip from being in a safe situation to being in immediate danger without noticing the transition.
I am aware of this (and as I already said this is why piloting requires greater focus), but I don't see how that changes the fact that there actually is a transition that takes a heck of a lot longer than going from a completely safe (given all available information and proper operation) to a completely unsafe situation takes on the road.
also you're more likely to crash somewhere where you don't hit anybody else
But I read he was doing a loop right before the crash. Is the same true for acrobatics?
I learned about this from Reddit <https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1daolaw/rip_bill_and...>. Title edited by me from "WA" to "Washington State".
Besides making history as the first human expedition to the Moon, Apollo 8 produced not one, but two future CEOs of Fortune 500 companies: Anders (General Dynamics) and Frank Borman (Eastern Airlines). Jim Lovell "merely" survived Apollo 13.
As a WA native: happy for the edit of the ambiguous and US-centric acronym WA -> Washington.
Also as a WA native: screw those DC assholes, why are we the only state that have to append "state" to our name?
Then sometimes Western Australia pops up randomly.
Well, at least you get representation in Congress!
New York calling... Disambiguation is sometimes necessary and, a bit more often, just a good idea.
Should have picked a different name then, Washington DC had already been around for a century.
(Also, New York has to append “state” too.)
Man flys to the moon and back, and then 55 years later as a 91 year old dies flying a jet aircraft. Some are just built different.
In my opinion Chuck Yeager was the best pilot ever. A World War 2 ace who shot down 13 German planes. First to break the sound barrier. But Yeager took his last flight in a jet at 79 (with a copilot) and surrendered his pilots license at age 80.
I am not taking anything away from William Anders but 91 might have been just too old to be responsibly flying a jet.
The T-34 is not a jet.
Lawrence of Arabia was at the forefront of so many skirmishes, but in the end he got killed driving a motorcycle back at home.
One of the inventors of the motorcycle "died in the saddle" at the age of 72. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1c26z70/til_t...>
flying a jet aircraft
Not a jet. The T-34 is a propeller aircraft, used for training.
the plane that crashed was a vintage Air Force T-34 Mentor...
About the plane:
"The Beechcraft T-34 Mentor is an American propeller-driven, single-engined, military trainer aircraft derived from the Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza."
Here is a photo of Major Anders in his T-34, from 5 years ago.
Major General Anders, actually. O8 vs. O4.
Thank you for the correction. The man certainly deserves it.
Man what a cool plane.
William Anders never walked on another world.
you're right; thank you for the correction
I really like the popup text on that:
"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
I once met Bill Anders on Orcas Island.
Years ago I was making a video about describing a stone that I found on an Orcas beach, and I was consulting with geologists and biologists. I met at a local cafe with a marine biologist to get her opinion about barnacles on the stone. As we were talking, a man at the next table mentioned that he thought the stone was possibly volcanic. He also said he had a petrologist friend I should talk to.
Nice coincidence. The guy said his name was something-something... I'm not good with names and pretty much forget them instantly.
Later, I'm with the biologist on the beach, looking at barnacles when a P-51 Mustang comes screaming overhead on a low pass over the island. I lived on Orcas and I had never seen that before.
"Oh, that's Bill Anders," said the biologist. "Remember, you met him at the Orcas Hotel cafe. He was on Apollo 8."
That made a lot of sense. The Apollo astronauts were trained field geologists!
I suspect his crash was a suicide. I come from a flying family and this is how pilots commonly fantasize about dying on their own terms.
I suspect his crash was a suicide.
I wouldn't count on that. Most of us wouldn't do that to the aviation world. Decreases plane availability, especially for something like a T-34 Mentor, increases insurance rates, increases FAA stance on already asinine policies, etc.
occams razor - he misjudged his aerobatics.
Unless you leave a note or tell someone, could the FAA determine it was intentional? Given the type of aircraft could a pilot plausibly commit suicide in a way that made it look like pilot error?
This is a Baha'i Prayer I like to say for people who pass on to the next life
Its hard to describe how I feel about it, its just so deep and profound...
Consciousness itself, as apart from the behavior and computation that goes on in the brain, is a mystery of neuroscience. So maybe somehow it persists after we die? NDEs kinda shed light on that
RIP up in the stars man
Just because we can’t explain it yet doesn’t mean there is some voodoo involved
This is a minor nitpick, as English is not my native language, but wouldn't it make sense to say "died in" more so than "was killed in"? The guy was not a passive observer by any means and should be paid respect.
No, “was killed in” is just as standard when you’re talking about things like plane crashes.
Speaking about his famous Earthrise photograph, Anders said: "We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing that we discovered was the Earth."
Quite a career... Almost sounds fake
Blue skies. He died by doing what he loved. No better way to go.
I avoid getting in small planes since the statistics say they are as dangerous as riding motorcycles.
They never mention if there was another person in his 2 person plane. What a life!
Went kayaking with two of his sons in Costa Rica. They’re an adventurous bunch.
God blessed him to be able to die doing what he loved at the ripe old age of 91. Prayers for his family or foundation to be able to keep the flying heritage museum well maintained in his honor.
RIP legend.
Legend he was.
That photograph is a mere footnote to the sheer audacity of Apollo 8
- first crewed flight of the Saturn V.
- first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth's orbit.
- first crewed spacecraft to enter Lunar orbit.
- first humans to see the far side of the moon.
- most watched (at the time) live TV broadcast.
Those guys had balls of steel, and I'll be pouring one out on the stoop for Bill Anders and the crew later today in memory.
I keep telling my friend not to fly small planes, but he is hooked.
What a life. And be able to pilot at 91 is nothing short of a miracle. Godspeed
Rest in peace, I'm sad to hear this especially with so few Apollo astronauts still around.
It's an open secret in the aviation community that large numbers of aging boomers are medically unfit to fly but are able to maintain their medicals, for a variety of reasons.
I personally don’t think that people that age should be driving even a car in public. Any time I am stuck behind a car driving slow, eg. doing 30 on a 60, it’s an old person. It’s dangerous, nearly seen so many accidents with people overtaking.
But then again, if it’s someone’s own plane and there’s little risk to anyone but themself, then maybe fire in. But wow should the insurance be through the roof.
I try to be sympathetic to older drivers. I can't imagine what it's like to be 70+, have no immediate family or friends, but still be a half an hour from the closest grocery store.
Until we properly take care of our elders, I don't know what else they can do.
Meals On Wheels, et alia are saviours, imho.
Same thing for children. One of the hardest things to watch as a parent is kids who are utterly trapped by urban hell infrastructure. Society doesn't treat people without cars well at all.
Another reason self driving cars will be one of the greatest inventions in our lifetimes!
A bandaid to a society being built on car reliance. Even as a fit and healthy person with a car, getting anywhere in that kind of city is such a chore.
My wife's grandfather drove like a bat out of hell. He wasn't safe either.
Is there any more you can say about (1) how you know this and/or (2) whether there are reports or books that talk about this at all?
This is the main way: https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airmen_certificati...
Lots of old pilots in the general aviation community are on BasicMed.
FAA studied the results of BasicMed and found no statistically significant differences in crash rate between BasicMed and FAA/AME issued physicals.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/resear...
I doubt there are reports. Such is the nature of open secrets. Once they're reported in an official fashion they cease to be "secret" and regulators' hands are forced.
So you have no personal connection and no knowledge of any particular reports. That doesn't make you wrong, but surely you can understand how reading this and not knowing what you know, this raises every possible red flag for unsubstantiated internet speculation.
Here's a brief guide https://www.faa.gov/ame_guide/standards
"Old guy crashes airplane" is a somewhat common occurrence that leads to obvious question if they really should have passed their medical. There's a tendency to not want to be the one to say no, especially if you've known the doctor signing the forms for decades... or if you were a fricken astronaut.
At least with an airplane you're not much risk to others....
Sarcasm doesn't translate well via text.
This wasn't sarcastic at all—any driver of a car is far more dangerous than one in a plane. 9/11 is essentially meaningless in the shadow of auto deaths (to provide a direct comparison). I can't get a firm number on number of plane fatalities in the US (or auto fatalities worldwide), but 9/11 alone would amount to about only 0.04% of total vehicle fatalities in the US since 2000.
if i live to be 90, i'd wish to die quietly in my sleep like my grandpa.
not screaming in terror like his passengers.
No passengers.
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/389197
Both scenarios are unlikely. Most likely it will be a long time of being tortured by doctors trying everything in the book to squeeze a few more days of money from your insurance.
Roads concentrate traffic near other people. A vehicle running off the road is much more likely to hit something than a plane falling out of the sky.
A very large proportion of private aviation accidents involve only the people in the aircraft.
The aircraft is unfortunately known for crashing without pilot error
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-34_Mentor#Civilia...
And 91 year olds are unfortunately known for dying simply because they fell asleep.
I hope to be 91 myself one day - nevertheless, I remain suspicious.
From the Los Angeles Times, 1988 <http://articles.latimes.com/1988-12-08/news/vw-1384_1_speake...>:
At a minimum, flight reviews every two years. More applicable to a 90yo is keeping a medical.
For private flying, the medical is a lot less stringent (as I understand it.... I'm not a pilot).
You're probably still healthier than most of the country if you have a Third Class.
According to the FAA airman registry he was flying on BasicMed (less strict than third class, but comes with loss of certain privileges).
WILLIAM ALISON ANDERS
Airman opted-out of releasing address Medical Information: Medical Class: Third Medical Date: 10/2013 MUST HAVE AVAILABLE GLASSES FOR NEAR VISION. NOT VALID FOR ANY CLASS AFTER 10/31/2014. BasicMed Course Date: 3/22/2023 BasicMed CMEC Date: 3/22/2023 Certificates
Eh… a third class medical still is highly sensitive to your medical history. See /r/flying for various tribulations even young people have gone through for relatively benign things.
and one can absolutely get examined by a “pilot’s doctors”
Pilots in the US need to pass a biennial flight review with a few hours of ground… or add a rating instead. It’s possible he was operating under BasicMed so he may not have needed a recent medical.
(But would have needed to self-certify health and maintain a valid driver’s license)
As in, “yup, I’m feeling good enough to fly today” and then pass our nations highly rigorous driving tests :)
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in very good mental+physical condition though. The crash might have nothing to do with age.
He absolutely was on BasicMed; his last medical was 11 years ago. His last BasicMed course was about a year ago.
A BFR is not just ground... you have to demonstrate airborne skills as well
And even with BasicMed, your primary doctor has to certify that you are fit to fly. It's less rigorous than a full FAA flight medical by design, but it's not a rubber stamp. (You're also limited to smaller aircraft that are unlikely to do much damage on the ground.)
I’ve seen a few people mentioning medical certifications, but nobody has mentioned that 8 years ago the FAA passed a system called BasicMed which allows pilots to continue flying without getting a medical examination as long as they meet certain conditions. The plane must not exceed 6,000 lbs and must carry less than six passengers. You also can’t have failed your last medical exam. The plane he crashed had a maximum takeoff weight of 5,500 lbs and only carried two people. As long as he flew below 18,000 ft and 250 knots, he was legal (I’m not saying anything about whether he was healthy enough to fly).
In all likelihood he hadn’t had a physical in 8 years. He still would have had to have passed one in his eighties, but he probably hadn’t had an FAA exam in a while.
Source: I’m a private pilot and my dad in his 60s is as well, he flies on BasicMed because he hates going to the doc.
Edit: someone actually had mentioned BasicMed a few minutes before I started typing, but I’ll leave my comment up.
You still need to get a physical (and sign off) from your primary doc every few years under BasicMed. Just not a full FAA flight physical. If someone has not had a documented physical at all in 8 years, they're not legal to fly.
This is also a matter of public record, you can look up exactly what medical class he's operating under and when his last physical exam was on the FAA website. There no need to speculate.
Edit: I just looked it up. He had his last BasicMed physical from his primary doc last year, so he was current.
The FAA only knows when you last took the BasicMed quiz and attested that you will follow the rules. Getting a physical, storing the form signed by the doctor, and maintaining a valid drivers license are up to the individual.
Speaking with several astronauts, including Jim Lovell, Gen Tom Stafford, and TK Mattingly, my memory of those conversations is that all Apollo-era astronauts had and continue to have complete physicals from NASA every year. If that's the case he would probably have had feedback, even if the results aren't publicly available.
My memory may be faulty ... I offer this in case someone knows better.
overall, the bar for skills and medical is significantly higher for flying vs driving. the other comments do a good job addressing the specifics.
it's worth keeping in mind that the sky is a big place. so is the ground when you're not driving a car. it's not a great idea to keep flying in your 90s, but it's extremely unlikely that anyone gets hurt who didn't choose to be in the plane.
Though you still leave a big fucking mess for someone to deal with.