Crashes are most common on takeoff and landing, and that means you're over populated areas. GA and military crashes that kill people on the ground happen all t

Crashes are most common on takeoff and landing, and that means you're over populated areas. GA and military crashes that kill people on the ground happen all the time. Used to happen all the time at airshows, too - until airshows adopted very strict rules around planes never having a trajectory that heads towards the audience. But that's all beside the point. A 90 year old has no business flying a fighter jet, and I don't care if he was a former astronaut or not. He certainly didn't have any business doing so alone. Reaction time goes down dramatically with age and nothing can be done about that. Mental capacity diminishes, too; mistakes skyrocket, which is why we have so many elderly people ramming their cars into convenience stores and such. Health risks like a stroke, especially in an aircraft that can generate high g's.The body's tolerance for heat and cold goes down. It was incredibly selfish of him to keep flying.