Emir wrote:
Who’s liable for reimbursement?
I would say the state/CAA for pilots and perhaps the the doctor(s) for the CAA vs doctors, but the latter is a criminal offense in any case. It’s rather obvious the CAA is responsible for the overall system/process from a civil law point of view IMO. But there may be more to it. Maybe the word has spread that by going to these doctors, the medical will be guaranteed, fast and cheap for instance, but obviously dodgy? Perhaps some/most pilots would rather just pay for a new medical and move on in silence, rather than risking a court.
On the same logic – maybe the state should be liable for all commercial air accidents licence pilots and AOC holders? AOCs are individually approved and audited by the authority, same as AMEs..
How about pilots? They licence them, too…
I think this is a silly argument. Like any other organisation, they should be liable for people who are employed or subcontracted by them. So if you pay the CAA Aeromedical Centre for the services of an AMO who works there (employed, as a contractor, or in any other way) the CAA owes the service and is liable if it is “defective”. If they merely licence professionals, they should not be liable; the professional certainly is.
The only thing that is problematic is that the CAA withdraws medicals immediately on the presumption that because some medicals were issued fraudulently, all medicals issued by that AME were fraudulent, grounding innocent pilots. Given the miniscule risk of a pilot unfit to fly causing an accident, this is an overreaction; they are creating damage where there is none by not giving people a grace period to get a new one. But as usual there is no recause for overzealous regulation…
Cobalt wrote:
If they merely licence professionals, they should not be liable; the professional certainly is.
It’s about responsibility, not about being professional or not. The medical examinations themselves may very well be OK, technically speaking. The one and only responsible vs the pilots is the CAA. In fact, the only thing the CAA is responsible of, is a working system that actually works according to (their) regulations. This time it obviously didn’t.
@Cobalt wrote:- Given the miniscule risk of a pilot unfit to fly causing an accident, this is an overreaction; they are creating damage where there is none by not giving people a grace period to get a new one.
I absolutely agree with this and there is no reason not to give a " grace period" after all tjere is precedent. During Covid medical extensions were given because AMEs were not able to carry out medicals.
On the same logic – maybe the state should be liable for all commercial air accidents licence pilots and AOC holders? AOCs are individually approved and audited by the authority, same as AMEs..
How about pilots? They licence them, too…
Hence what I wrote about liability for the 100k CPL/IR school; it is likely to be stretching it a bit.
But it is not the same thing. Getting the initial medical directly led to you spending the 100k. It is step #1. Getting on an airliner piloted by two pilots and licensed under an AOC is different because you would have done that anyway even if there were two chimps in the cockpit (occassionally there appear to be 
).
A see a similarity in that a young injury victim who is unable to continue to a promising career can get compensation for his now-impossible earnings.
I suspect there is more to the story. The most obvious candidate is that the CAA didn’t want to openly wash its dirty laundry about the vast number of pilots who passed through that AME knowingly (because 99% of pilots will run at 100km/h to any AME who is reportedly “easy”) and probably most of them being commercial. CAAs are extremely reactive when it comes to any suspicion of an AME doing easy medicals. I know a case from over here but won’t be able to write about it for a decade or two There is a long history here… dig around Hungarian medicals in the good old JAA days 
Probably thousands of airline pilots got their initial Class 1 there but the environment was moving so fast that nobody acted on it; Brussels (EASA) dealt with it by banning “medical tourism” by forcing the medical country to be the same country as the license.
I am not arguing that the AME should not be liable for damages. For those who actually can get a medical they will be llimited to the cost of a new medical; pro-rata for the time of the old medical it covers – hardly worth suing for.
That leaves those who are now barred from a licence because they absolytely cannot get a medical. I strongly suspect that quite a few of them were complicit in the fraud – they knew exactly why they were using that particular AME!
There will be very few people who are now permanently sans a medical who are innocent.
Cobalt wrote:
There will be very few people who are now permanently sans a medical who are innocent.
Yes, but they’ve spent a lot of money as Emir has pointed above.
There is also a question of initial Class 1 and a renewal – the initial is much stricter, and to my knowledge the pilots are asked to pass the initial.
I didn’t get a reply from my lawyer friend; I think he doesn’t want to get into it especially as this is in Denmark and not UK.
Courts in common law countries (such as the UK) and in statutory law ones (such as Denmark) may have very different views of liability in this case. For example, moral damages in the EU are often a symbolic amount (like 1 euro). When my ex got seriously poisoned with carbon monoxide from a malfunctioning heater in a rented flat in France and was medically unfit to work for half a year or so, the compensation she got for that was commensurate with what she would have earned over that period. Had this happened in the USA, the claim could have easily gone into millions.
Had this happened in the USA, the claim could have easily gone into millions.
Understanding you were talking about a different non-aviation, commercial situation (I am a landlord and carry liability insurance for just such a claim ), FWIW my previous AME was removed by FAA due to some sort of malfeasance situation like the one here, although he had been properly accredited by FAA when he gave my (almost nonexistent) exam. There was no impact – I was not notified by FAA and just renewed with a different AME on the normal schedule. I’m sure the only impact for him was being cut off from his gravy train. FAA doesn’t pass their oversight issues onto the pilot or tell him anything of FAA business, and the drama doesn’t typically rise to quite the same level.
