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Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

Martha Lunken lost her pilots license at 78 years old for flying under a bridge. She had 14,000 hours, worked for the FAA as a safety manager and ran a flying school for 28 years. This guy is toast.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/04/18/lunken-airp...

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My father used to fly with the RAF - he told me that old pilots who were about to lose their licenses due to age/health used to 'go out with a bang' flying under a bridge rather than quietly aging out of their license. IIRC, Tower Bridge in London was a favorite. This was decades ago, but I'm curious if the motivations were similar here.

I don’t know that it was a favourite, but there was certainly a famous incident in 1968 where a pilot decided to buzz Tower Bridge as a protest against the MoD not recognising the RAF’s 50th anniversary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hunter_Tower_Bridge_inc...

(My father was also ex-RAF, though his role was to jump out of planes - and teach others how to - rather than fly them)

What a story. Anybody interested in seeing this Alan Pollock, I guess this is him: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_YhGsknrK8Io/SE-QN8bsQDI/AAAAAAAAC...

Holy crap that is an insane story.

Here's the man himself telling the story: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80027439

According to a followup article she'd also turned her ADS-B off before going under the bridge (which is apparently why her license was revoked rather than suspended).

So the hypothesis seems credible at least.

> She had 14,000 hours, worked for the FAA as a safety manager and ran a flying school for 28 years

Sounds like the FAA correctly decided that she should have known better. Especially given her age, she should have been dotting every i and crossing every t, because everyone knows the FAA comes down like a pile of bricks on elderly pilots.

They do?

They might, but probably not for the reason(s) the GP is implying. I've definitely noticed a correlation between age and how quickly a pilot is to disregard safety, checklists, etc.

> ... worked for the FAA as a safety manager ...

Sounds more like she was a liability.

Sounds on purpose.

The linked article is a little odd to me, this story is kind of famous as she's a bit of a celebrity in the aviation world for her accomplished instruction career. The way I've always heard it is that she was aware that her pilot's certificate was going to be revoked soon anyway due to her advanced age, and so she flew under the bridge well aware that there was a possibility her certificate would be revoked for it. AOPA's article supports this theory, it says that she did fight the revocation but quotes her saying that she knew it would likely happen.

She knew that would be the result. She can't have not known. Every FAA certificated pilot knows not to do this, with a limited exception for seaplane landings and takeoffs AFAIK. Why is this even an article? I don't know.

(FAA certificated pilot for almost 30 years.)

Article says she only lost it for nine months, and has to retake the test if she wants it back.

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