The UK CAA now allows pilots to fly G-regs in UK airspace on an EASA PPL if they have submitted the medical self declaration i.e. no Class 2 medical is required!
From here
I think a valid medical is a requirement (where required so e.g. the French UL scene doesn’t, and the UK has similar scenarios) for any meaningful stats.
I say that because most people who lose their medical give up permanently (I reckon the average cost of regaining an EASA or FAA medical is 1k-3k) and those who give it up give up even more permanently. But a lot of people have non-expiring licenses, and looooads of people will be paying club memberships until they die (for emotional reasons, or to have somewhere to socialise / hang out / fly even if they don’t fly as PIC anymore). Legend has it that lots of private clubs have deceased members – because many widows can’t face sorting it out.
Whether this medical data is available for Europe generally I doubt. This thread suggests it isn’t available, other than as hearsay.
I don’t disbelieve France has 40k pilots, but I do not believe the reported claim that this is 50% of Europe. Nobody who has been to France, UK and Germany would believe it.
Peter wrote:
(I reckon the average cost of regaining an EASA or FAA medical is 1k-3k)
How so? To regain the medical one would probably have to get rid of a condition that made one unfit to fly, but most of these are permanent and if they’re not the treatment would usually be included in health insurance premiums anyways. I guess you mean costs for diagnostics after successful treatment?
Yes; it tends to be the cost of CAA-mandated tests and consultant reports.
AFAIK very few people have insurance covering this sort of thing. Germans pay (via salary deductions) towards a fairly comprehensive cover but it would be amazing if it covered the cost of regaining aviation medicals.
Peter wrote:
Germans pay (via salary deductions) towards a fairly comprehensive cover but it would be amazing if it covered the cost of regaining aviation medicals
What is the typical condition that ends the medical? I would believe it is some heart related condition that is fixed in any case (if it is fixable). It could also be caused by poor life style (poor eating habits, too little exercise etc, high blood pressure), but these conditions usually don’t cost anything to fix, other than self discipline 
It could be cancer or something, that is also fixed, if fixable. Anyone know?
Losing my medical due to high glucose in 2008 cost me nothing. I lost weight, got the blood glucose down, and got my medical back in less than 4 months. I’ve kept it down since then with no medication.
(The root cause was an injured foot, leading to a change in exercise without a diet change.)
I think after successful heart surgery, after a time, it can be restored without an exorbitant expense. (Based on people I’ve known.)
According to one AME, most people who lose their medical lose it due to heart disease (bunged-up heart arteries mostly) or cancer.
The former can usually be fixed but you usually have to spend 4 figures to get your medical back. There are CAA protocols which have to be followed. The FAA has a better protocol than EASA in this area. It can also be fixed with a diet but it will probably take you years to get your medical back so pilots have little choice but to go for surgery.
The latter is more complicated and depends on the details. EASA is generally more pragmatic than the FAA in this area, especially with prostate stuff.
OTOH this AME told me that only ~ 1% of his customers lose their medical at his clinic. The rest of those who would have lost it, perhaps a few % more, self-disqualify and he doesn’t see them. They just quietly abandon flying. The ones who lose it at his clinic have variable reasons. He can’t usually detect cancer but sometimes the ECG finds something.
My feeling is that the majority of medical losses never get back to flying. But most can continue driving, which is where the French UL or the UK self declaration can keep pilots in the air. Whether these are significant to pilot numbers, I don’t know. What is the average age of the French UL community?
Peter wrote:
AFAIK very few people have insurance covering this sort of thing. Germans pay (via salary deductions) towards a fairly comprehensive cover but it would be amazing if it covered the cost of regaining aviation medicals.
No, the cost of aviation medicals is indeed not covered by German health insurance (neither public nor private, but I guess you can get some add-on insurance for this as a professional pilot).
However:
Peter wrote:
According to one AME, most people who lose their medical lose it due to heart disease (bunged-up heart arteries mostly) or cancer.The former can usually be fixed but you usually have to spend 4 figures to get your medical back. There are CAA protocols which have to be followed. The FAA has a better protocol than EASA in this area. It can also be fixed with a diet but it will probably take you years to get your medical back so pilots have little choice but to go for surgery.
If we stay with the example of coronary heart disease (“bunged-up heart arteries” in the layman’s terms ) then it is perhaps easier to understand what I meant. CHD is a life-threatening condition per se. It can either manifest as
Diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease is most definately completely covered by health insurance. If an operation is necessary (coronary bypass, multiple acronyms are used such as ACVB or ACB or CAB) then it is also completely covered by health insurance (would otherwise indeed cost several k€, up to 10k or so). The follow-up diagnostics such as coronary angiography or myocardial CT scans would also be covered by health insurance in most cases, since this disease not only endangers one’s medical but more importantly one’s life.
The only case I can see where this actually costs a pilot extra money is if their AME says they need an operation when their normal cardiologists say they don’t. Then it get’s interesting. Unfortunately the criteria defined by the CAAs or the AMEs are somewhat opaque for me as a physician. Normally you can simply look up the guidelines to diagnosis and treatment of any disease as published by the respective specialists organisation, but the aeromedical organisation doesn’t seem to publish these.
The follow-up diagnostics such as coronary angiography or myocardial CT scans would also be covered by health insurance in most cases, since this disease not only endangers one’s medical but more importantly one’s life.
Maybe this is where Germany differs from the UK but here you get stented or bypassed and sent home, and there is not even a follow-up consultation. They do send you to a “cardio rehab class” where you stand around lifting your feet off the floor (hard work for some people even before they had work done) and generally telling everybody they are glad to go back to eating their fry-ups
To get an aviation medical back, you have long extra protocols such as exercise ECG, nuclear perfusion scan (2-yearly for FAA, initial for UK CAA) and this costs a few k. To regain a Class 1 or 2 under FAA you need a repeat angiogram (!!) and this costs a good few k in Europe and 2x that in the USA. These tests have to be paid for privately. A normal person would not need any of this, if they are free of angina, etc. Drive 1 week after a stent, 6 weeks after a bypass.
Airline pilots, those that I have known, have their Class 1 insured for some large amount (250k in one case) but that is for a permanent loss of it, and that is not common; even after a bypass you get it back after 6 months (with a multi pilot restriction, AIUI). They may have additional insurance…
Peter wrote:
To get an aviation medical back, you have long extra protocols such as exercise ECG, nuclear perfusion scan (2-yearly for FAA, initial for UK CAA) and this costs a few k. To regain a Class 1 or 2 under FAA you need a repeat angiogram (!!) and this costs a good few k in Europe and 2x that in the USA. These tests have to be paid for privately. A normal person would not need any of this, if they are free of angina, etc. Drive 1 week after a stent, 6 weeks after a bypass.
Reading this I don’t think Germany differs that much from the UK. An exercise ECG could probably be obtained through normal health insurance here, but a nuclear perfusion scan probably not as there doesn’t seem to be a medical indication for it. Angiogramms are done quite often in Germany because we are densely covered with the required machinery and every hospital with a cardiology unit wants one because it’s one of the few procedures where hospitals get a nice income from public insured patients.
It would be great if we got a German cardiologist on here who could give us more insight. An AME will usually not perform all these diagnostics unless he also is a cardiologist or radiologist himself, but AFAIK only specialist in internal medicine and work medicine can become An ex here.
