Unfortunately won’t make much difference to me, since I suspect that I’ll still have to have an FAA medical if I want to keep flying the Auster over here! Although in this case it’s pretty clear the Class 3 medical will continue to exist even if certain pilots don’t need them, it will be a problem for me if they actually got rid of (and stopped issuing) the medicals altogether.
They’re trying again with a new US congress Link
Perhaps of interest here is that the new bill is apparently more expansive and deletes the private pilot medical requirement for VFR and IFR up to 14,000 ft in aircraft up to 6000 lbs and six seats. If this were to be used as a basis for future enlightened EASA action 
, presumably the broader coverage would be beneficial.
shame about the altitude and speed limits in the proposal but overall a positive development if it gets passed.
That’s amazing. I never thought they would even consider.
They would never drop it for commercial flying as that puts the general public at risk.
Flight Instructors will need some additional training to assess pilot’s health and fitness I suppose.
They can’t do it for commercial work because the pilot would be sub ICAO. It would be farcical because such pilots would not be able to leave US airspace.
Whether medicals work to avoid in-flight pilot incapacitation is another debate 
I don’t think they do, for somebody who “looks” ok. If somebody looks like a walking corpse then maybe, but you have to ask yourself how many of them will want to fly a plane in the first place.
Very exceptionally, an ECG might pick something up. But the real question is what can a medical pick up which could cause an unexpected in flight incapacitation? If a medical picks up some chronic disease, that doesn’t count.
Flight Instructors will need some additional training to assess pilot’s health and fitness I suppose.
What would that consist of? The only things I could think of that might be reasonable would be screening tests for hearing, vision and obvious physical disabilities. And perhaps any obvious signs of madness. Be careful what you wish for.
Either bite the bullet and stick to your guns that it’s unnecessary, or pay for someone who knows what they’re doing. Getting a flying instructor to do an AME’s job would be unfair to the flying instructor. Any sensible professional who recognises that they’re working beyond the limits of their competency is going to have to refer up, which would often mean making a mountain out of a molehill – e.g. avoidable trips to Gatwick.
Very exceptionally, an ECG might pick something up. But the real question is what can a medical pick up which could cause an unexpected in flight incapacitation? If a medical picks up some chronic disease, that doesn’t count.
I had a very nasty experience once.
After waking up one morning and sitting up on the bedside, the room rotated 90° and I got an extreme attack of vertigo and started puking. Worse than anything I’ve ever encountered before or since. My wife drove me to the hospital emergency room and after making sure I hadn’t had a stroke, I was sent to an ear specialist.
It turned out had “benign paroxysmal positional vertigo” where one of the otholiths in the saccular canals (you remember those from Human Factors, right? ) had dislodged and played havoc with the ear motion sensors.
It was surprisingly easily fixed by rotating the head a few times in the planes of the saccular canals which drove out the loose otholith. According to the doctor having one episode of this did not increase the chance of having another.
This was during my break from flying, but I did have a “medical” (although it’s not called that) for railway operations. The medical examiner asked for copies of the hospital records and then cleared me. The same guy is also an aeromedical examiner and later did the check for my class 2 medical when I resumed flying — no problems with that either.
This is something that could never have been picked up at a medical exam and if it had happened in flight, I’d be dead as it left me almost completely incapacitated.
The number one cause of medical incapacitation is gastroenteritis/food-poisoning. Obviously that’s not going to be picked up at a medical, because it’s going to be a short-term issue, and how many people actually crash from it is another matter.
Going back to BBPV… there are people who have it recurrently, often not particularly severely so for them it may be something that could be discussed at a medical. There’s always going to be something that can strike ‘out of the blue’ but the question is whether there are enough things that give some warning, to justify a regular medical examination – or perhaps just one prior to going solo.
Also Airborne Again had a very sensible question – whether he was likely to have another attack. But who would he have asked for advice if he didn’t have an AME to hand? No sensible GP would have given an opinion.
If a medical picks up some chronic disease, that doesn’t count.
Now hang on, if the medical prevents someone from being a danger to himself and others due to some condition, how does that not count. The medical is a significant “gate” that allows or disallows people to fly.
Also, to base an opinion about the sense or non-sense of medicals on people that have already passed an initial, and then develop a condition that results in a fail at a medical at some point later in time, is basing an opinion on skewed statistics. How could we get statistics that include the people that have been refused a medical for good reasons?
The article has some skewed statistics in itself i.e. throws some figures in for good measure. E.g. 6,000 pilots leave GA industry each year… how many of those are related to medical issues.
Getting a flying instructor to do an AME’s job would be unfair to the flying instructor.
And to the AME. It depends on how you read this sentence in the original article: “With passage of this legislation, pilots will continue to assess their fitness to fly and undergo regular flight reviews with a flight instructor, just as they do today”.
At least it looks like the pilots are going to do the AME’s job:
To participate, pilots would be required to take recurrent safety training to help them accurately assess their fitness to fly.
So, not quite “just as they do today”.
Footnote:
Found some stats here: Link
Apparently we are talking about 1.2% of pilot applicants that are now refused a medical, that with this new legislation would be able to fly…
if the medical prevents someone from being a danger to himself and others due to some condition, how does that not count. The medical is a significant “gate” that allows or disallows people to fly.
I think there is a lot of risk compensation going on.
Anybody who gets a PPL cannot be stupid. At a wild guess, they are in the top 10% of the IQ spectrum. I know lots of pilots; some of them may be ignorant (one 3000hr one doesn’t bother with tafs/metars and just look at the BBC, but then he flies only very locally – another great example of risk compensation) but all of them are pretty clever.
And a clever person who knows there is something not right is not going to go up flying.
The problem with the regulatory apparatus, especially the European one, is that it starts with the assumption that the pilot is stupid, is lying, is forging his logbooks (hence mandatory classroom bum-on-chair time) and is willing to go flying with blood oozing out of some orifice.
I am very certain that there are loads of people who don’t think much of having blood coming out of somewhere and generally live in a total denial of their health. These are the people who suddenly discover they have terminal cancer with 3 months to live, etc. There is a man working in the firm next door who smoked maybe 50/day, got a heart attack, got heart surgery (on the taxpayer of course; he lives on a council estate) and was seen standing outside the hospital gate, with the drip going into his arm (he was holding up the bottle) and… smoking! He is back at work now, smoking all the time. But he will never be a pilot.
Risk compensation works at so many levels in aviation. It makes people control their mission profile according to what they think is safe. And it works most of the time – because the entrance bar is so high that maybe 90% of the population could never get in.
1.2% of pilot applicants that are now refused a medical, that with this new legislation would be able to fly
Refused at what average age?
Also, while I don’t know the details of how the USA might work this, the Sports Pilot license is not permitted if you actually failed the standard medical. You have to quietly withdraw from the pipeline without actually failing a medical.
Whereas the UK NPPL allows you to fail the CAA Class 2 medical and just go straight to the NPPL. I don’t know if the EASA LAPL is similar.
In the past, the UK CAA allegedly kept an eye on pilots who failed a medical but were seen to be active (perhaps as owners on G-INFO?). They can’t do that anymore because such a pilot can totally overtly go to the NPPL.
A few of them went N-reg and that was controversial as hell, but the range of medical conditions where you would not get a CAA Class 2 but would get an FAA Class 3 was pretty limited. I think it was mostly stuff like uncorrected vision. The JAA audiogram was a big one for would-be IR holders too.
