Age of your oldest passenger?

Bob Bement

Bob Bement

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Bob Bement
As I was making out a birthday card for my friend Mary on her 101 birthday I got to thinking about this topic. I gave her a plane ride two years ago when she was 99. She has lived at home up until just a few months ago when she entered the nursing home. By the way she loved the flight! Bob
 

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Bob Bement said:
she was 99.
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Not even close, my Dad, 70. I need to see if my grandpa Buck would like to go up, he's 91.
 
My dad, 84 at the time. I think it was his first "stick time", and he had a ball.
 

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85. Ex-wwII P-51 pilot.

Now I have to tell you about another of these 'old guys' who continue to provide me with hope...
An 80 yr old father of a friend in Ca called to say he was injured in a car accident recently. Not badly but here is how: He was zooming around the streets in a motorscooter, and wiped out on a bump because he was trying to pass a slow moving car!! What's a rocking chair? Checkers? Bah!
 
Lance F said:
My dad, 84 at the time. I think it was his first "stick time", and he had a ball.
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Looks like a pretty young 84.

My mom is my oldest so far. 74 at the time.
 
I had the privilege of taking up a WW2 pilot who since lost his medical, but still lived at an airport community. Seems all his buddies like to fly, but none of them had a license or a plane any longer. I didn’t ask his age...but he was OLD. And very nice knowledgeable guy.
Also took a CFI up when I was being checked out in my mooney..this guy was up there in age. Seemed like every 20 miles we needed to stop so he could drain the main vein. then it took him 20 minutes to work his way out of the plane. nice guy though. He proceeded to show me the road he flew MY plane down to when he ran out of gas once. That was the last flight I did with him.
 
I also had a student in his low 70's. Very young at heart. he ran into medical problems for 6 months, it seemed that occasionally he would get a little chest pain after running several miles (at 70!) so he had 6 months of blood tests and a stress test to get his medical back. but he got soloed again, but i moved out of town, and he is working with another instructor on his private. I had a ball soloing him and doing cross countries. We learned a lot from each other, hes nearly 3.5 times my age!
 
So far, it has been my dad (88 at the time, 89 now), and i imagine he'll fly with me again. My mom may never fly, because she is on O2 all the time; concerned about getting adequate saturation.

My wife Grandmother lives in Tallahassee, and she is 99 (as of yesterday); I am planning on taking her up next summer when we visit. Every year, when we fly there, she picks us up at the airport in her Caddy, no problem.

Here's a pic from this last summer.
 

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SCCutler said:
So far, it has been my dad (88 at the time, 89 now), and i imagine he'll fly with me again. My mom may never fly, because she is on O2 all the time; concerned about getting adequate saturation.

My wife Grandmother lives in Tallahassee, and she is 99 (as of yesterday); I am planning on taking her up next summer when we visit. Every year, when we fly there, she picks us up at the airport in her Caddy, no problem.

Here's a pic from this last summer.
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AFaIK my parents were my oldest pax although a couple of my Angel Flight missions were for pretty old looking folks (I have no idea of their actual age). The last time I took my dad flying was just a few days before he went into the hospital for an operation he didn't recover from. He was 88 at the time. I took my mom for her last ride in what was her Porterfield a few years ago when she still knew who I was (Alzheimers). She was 89 then, 92 now.
 
My mother who at the time was 78. She and I flew a short hop to visit my son. We flew IFR all the way. She held the charts and helped out with the cockpit chores. She told me the hardest part was getting out of the plane which was a Piper Turbo Arrow. She had flown with me many times on long trips but this one was very special. She told me she could not get in or out of the plane very well. It was her last trip. It was a great flight

John
 
My DE. He was 84 at the time. Ex-mil with logbooks and hours full of stories and experience. If it didn't cost $300 to fly with him, I'd do it more often!
 
My Dad, 79.

The very reason I still continue to own my own airplane. He has made significant contributions at times to see that I can still live the dream.
 
Sadie was indeed a grand lady, we had planned a flying trip for a number of years. Her health got bad and we put it off. She got to feeling better so we took a flight down to the Owyhee Res. landing strip and than we made a landing at a cow camp out in the owyhee desert. I am sorry to say she passed away a few months after these pictures were taken. She was 89.
 

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Bob Bement said:
As I was making out a birthday card for my friend Mary on her 101 birthday I got to thinking about this topic. I gave her a plane ride two years ago when she was 99. She has lived at home up until just a few months ago when she entered the nursing home. By the way she loved the flight! Bob
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You win, my was my mom's husband he is 83
 
80-ish. She is the wife of an amateur geologist I had worked with. He passed away, and I took her up to scatter his ashes over some of his favorite sites. It was a very moving experience. She was extremely grateful. It was a perfect day, and she had almost always gone out into the field with him, so she relived many of their times together looking at the geology from the air.

Judy
 
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As long as we are on the subject of old pax. What type of airplane do you find the easiest to deal with the less mobile pax??

My mom's hubby has a real bad leg. I have flown him in a PA28-161, C172Q and a C1272RG.

The warrior was the hardest for him to deal with. He was just not flexible enough to get out of once he managed to get in and I, being stuck on the left side, could offer no help. Another older less flexible pax managed to break my window on the door by hoisting herself up by hanging on the door frame.

The C172Q was better as it had a door on the right side but the strut and wheel would get in the way. The 172RG was probably the easiest for him, mainly due to the wheel being a bit further back and out of his way. I could use a small stool very close to the door for him.

how do you guys do it?
 
Scott, I built a step for loading and unloading pax, for my cessna 182. It slips over the wheel and butts up against the door frame. it has two steps and then a flat top portion. You can see a portion of it in my original post. Bob.
 
I was at a hot-air balloon tether about 2 years ago and there was this lady who was 99.

It was her 1st time in a hot-air balloon. She loved it.
 

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I love to take these people for a ride. I am happy flying and when I see how much fun the pax is having, I am happy again. It doesn't get any better than double happy.:yes:
 
smigaldi said:
As long as we are on the subject of old pax. What type of airplane do you find the easiest to deal with the less mobile pax??

My mom's hubby has a real bad leg. I have flown him in a PA28-161, C172Q and a C1272RG.

The warrior was the hardest for him to deal with. He was just not flexible enough to get out of once he managed to get in and I, being stuck on the left side, could offer no help. Another older less flexible pax managed to break my window on the door by hoisting herself up by hanging on the door frame.

The C172Q was better as it had a door on the right side but the strut and wheel would get in the way. The 172RG was probably the easiest for him, mainly due to the wheel being a bit further back and out of his way. I could use a small stool very close to the door for him.

how do you guys do it?
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I know of no easier airplane to get into/out of with a bum leg than a Cardinal RG. Huge door, low floor height, and no strut in the way. And with the seat all the way back (do they put short-stops in Cardinals these days?) I think you could get someone in who's knee's don't bend at all.
 
A Cessna works good, the Cardinal, as Lance said being the best.

I've had pretty good luck with my Mooney for a low wing. The seat is just about wing level with a 4-5" threshold. The PAX sits on the wing from the front and slides over to the threshold and sits over onto the seat then swings the legs in. Doesn't work for weight challenged but my step dad with limited bending ability likes it.
 
My dad was 86 when I took him to Las Vegas last year for an Army reunion. He had a great time. Lost him last Christmas. He was still talking about how much fun we had in Vegas!!

Dave
 
In 1988 I took my 87 yr old grandmother for her first and only airplane ride. It is something to think that someone born before the Wright brothers flew, still hadn't been in an airplane for that long.

During the ride I am pointing things out on the ground and she would say "how beautiful", but sit there very rigidly. After the flight, my stepmother, who was riding in the back asked her how she liked it. She said she thought it was wonderful. My stepmother said "I noticed you were a little tense, were you nervous?" No, she replied, "I didn't want to tip it"

We all got a good laugh, and explained that you can't tip an airplane like a canoe.
 
Dave I have a soft spot in my heart for those WWII guys. I made a tape of four WWII Vets for a school project. I learned a lot from a Marine on Iowa Jima for 37 days, an Army Air corp B-17 gunner that got shot down and spent eight months in a German POW camp, and two regular army vets. One went all across Europe with Gen. Patton, The other was with the same outfit that Audey Murphy was in and he had two purple heart medals. I bet you had lots of memories of that flight with your dad. Thanks. Bob
 
Two 80 year olds, both as their PAX and one as my PAX, as both guys were 50 year pilots plus, an X Lightning pilot from WWII that was probably ~75 at the time.
 
My oldest was 86 and wasn't a passenger. He was a CFI giving me a mountain flight training flight. Vern Foster.
 
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