aart wrote:
But apparently EASA is listening.
A problem here is that there become so many different licenses and medicals, it becomes a jungle. Already today we have:
A PPL medical also works for LAPL and when passing 50 you can fly on LAPL medical privileges the second year. A separate medical for each and every level of super fine grained “risk”. Is that really something we want?
This topic is in the same basket as 8.33 i.e. Europe is not a single country or anything even resembling one; all the old nationalism is very much alive, even to the extent that no adjacent countries’ CAAs are willing to discuss frequency allocation, each CAA has its own medical dept, its own AMEs, etc. No airspace unification is possible either; about 10 years ago I was speaking to Eric Sivel in a pub in London and he told me none of this is possible for territorial reasons.
So we see a proliferation of national ratings because they can be implemented internally.
IMHO, the LAPL is of little value because your GP does the medical, which most people think is a wonderful concession, except that your GP will know a lot more about your issues than your AME! In the UK it is almost impossible to visit any specialist without a letter going to your GP afterwards (unless you give him some bogus name/address for your GP). The only value of the LAPL medical is that it is a lot cheaper, but the cost saving is so small on the scale of flying costs that the only people who will notice are those who practically do not fly at all.
The current UK/FR annex 1 concession is great for supporting RV prices 
I asked one RV10 guy, tongue in cheek, how much he would want, and the reply was £250k… And I know people who would pay that immediately – for this exact reason.
IMHO, the LAPL is of little value because your GP does the medical, which most people think is a wonderful concession, except that your GP will know a lot more about your issues than your AME!
I’m not familiar with the LAPL medical certification process but in general the key issue with having a GP (or any other non CAA doctor) perform aviation medicals has nothing to do with hiding your medical data. It has to do with avoiding a pre-determined, often over-complex and time consuming test and approval process for any given known medical issue and instead providing the doctor with greater direct authority based on his/her individual medical discretion.
Having said that, GP medical certification for private pilots is an intermediate step. I think it’s likely that once the US has had pilots flying a wide range of aircraft for a period with no medical at all, with published data and reports to Congress etc, Europe will eventually have to follow. The UK did it first but Europe more generally will not follow the UK, it takes an outsider to provide leadership and data because the internal politics are so screwed up.
LAPL medical in France has to be carried out by an AME.
I don’t have a problem with my GP knowing my medical history.
However, I don’t see the reason for AME’s.
Anything that is likely to stop you flying IMO should be able to be seen, identified and if possible cured by your GP and any specialists you need to consult.
How would an AME or a bunch of medics at the DGAC know more about eg. your heart, than your specialist cardiologist and your GP even if they all have access to scans, dopplers and all sorts of other tests you might have had.
What extra information does an AME or a DGAC medical council get by insisting that you have all those tests done again sometimes every year.
On top of that I believe pilots should be honest with themselves and be responsible for their own health and well being.
Eg Have enough common sense to know that if something doesn’t feel right go see your GP and don’t fly until you have. After all this is a leisure activity.( I don’t disagree with CPLs and CAT pilots needing a medical, that’s a different matter)
This is how the ULM medical system works here. Its the same as if you.play rugby, golf tennis or join a cycling club and I do not see any problem with it.
Perhaps NAAs think that leisure pilots are pretty dumb creatures who have to be told when they are too sick or infirm to fly.
There are many examples of pilots who have flown with no arms, no legs, deaf pilots and even the blind have found a way to fly, maybe not solo.
I’ll be clear I have nothing against my AME and I can’t complain about the cost, I just have more faith in my GP, opthamologist, cardiologist and myself.
OTOH your cardiologist probably knows relatively little about flying. If I were taking some everyday blood pressure medicines I would want to know whether they would increase my chances of passing out at 2G. A cardiologist without specialist aviation knowledge would be ill-advised to comment.
My understanding is that your AME, who for the sake of argument trained as a GP, has access to specialists (e.g. cardiologists) who do have aviation medical training.
I believe that Silvaire is right: some day Europe will follow US with the medical rules, like it has done little by little in almost all rules – just too slowly. When I got the licence 51 years ago, every second PPL-medical could be done by any cheap general doctor. Did adding costs do anything safer? Not at all. I am absolutely sure that the main reason for expensive AME checks is money. Someone is ripping that money out from our pockets and lobbying at EASA to maintain situation like this.
Some years ago they still required the blood test every time and once I failed because I had been at blood donation some days before. So it took even more money to retake the test a week or so later. And all that was just wasted money, like you now know: the whole test is not more included today. So why I had to pay extra for double checks, if today it is not considered to be of any safety value?
Like I mentioned in another thread, some years ago I had to go for a car medical (getting 65 years young). It was pretty cheap and clearly stricter than the AMEs where I usually must go and pay 400 euros (that includes also the CAA cost). So why is the car check not enough for flying? For money, of course.
I’m happy that in some countries (US, UK) they are doing better and I would really love EASA to follow them. Not all of us are economically rich. As my fixed costs for the little plane go around 3000/year and flying takes perhaps 2000-2500, that 400 is pretty much for me. If I could use a 100 euro doctor (or self declaration), I could fly some 6-8 hours more per year with the same money.
I do understand that I am an exception – no CPL, no IR, no TB, no autopilot, no glass cockpit, no anything – but I do love flying around with a slow plane and just enjoy watching the green/yellow/grey/brown fields and forests and lakes, isles etc. And even more I love to give that experience to other people. I sure do not need any fancy things in my plane or a medical check to see how many G:s I can stand. As long as I can safely handle a car, most probably the same goes with that little slow plane, too. It may be different for IMC and CPL etc who may go to more complicated situations, I admit.
It may be different for IMC and CPL etc who may go to more complicated situations, I admit.
I’ve had a CPL (which I don’t use) since 2007 and an IR since 2006 and I don’t think there is anything special in IMC flight.
Obviously if doing single pilot paying passenger transport that is different and here they have a Class 1 medical every 6 months.
The insistence on a full Class 2 medical for GA is just because the AME lobby sees it as customers more willing+able to part with their cash.
€400 is a lot of money for a Class 2. Even I don’t pay that here.
I used to get my FAA and CAA Class 1s for under £200 for both, by an AME from NL who lived in the UK. Today’s rate is probably 3x as much, and I think the rates went up just as AMEs here were losing half their business to the PMD option which is now used by about 50% of UK PPLs.
@Kwif perhaps you could tell me what tests/exams an AME does during a medical that would not be picked up under my normal medical routine.
For instance I have an ECG/EKG done by my cardiologist on very expensive high tech machinery. I then have an ECG/EKG taken by my AME on much less high tech kit.
That ECG/EKG is then sent to the DGAC pôle medical who meet every three months to discuss these things and then decide whether or not I have to fly with a safety pilot for a year or have further tests, all of which had there been an anomaly in the first ECG/EKG would have happened anyway.
What exactly does an AME + Pôle medical bring to the table. Can for instance an AME see from the tests s/he does and even looking at all my dopplers, scans etc see that I am more likely to pass out at 2G than my cardiologist can?
When I first started flying, many moons ago, and being much younger, I was happy to go to my AME as I rarely visited a GP. The AME, a qualified doctor, doing the AME job in his spare time, gave what one might call, nowadays, a well man’s test, signed a piece of paper and that was it. Why has the class 2 medical become more difficult. Not from the exam that the AME does but by all the repeat paperwork which makes up a giant dossier held by the DGAC pôle medical and perhaps consulted and discussed every 3 months?
Why should qualified AME doctors have to be overseen by such an unseen committee?
Why should a committee decide you cannot fly for a year and then with a safety pilot after say a medical procedure which has cured the problem or shown that something was just a one off as stated by both your own medical practitioners and possibly an AME?
Why should an AME test your eyes every year under sub optimal conditions, when a specialist opthamologist says that your eyes are good to go for the next 10 years, using the latest high tech equipment?
And even then both can be overruled by a medical committee with unknown qualification.
Nothing I have seen in the current medical arrangements indicates that I would be any less safe to fly, without them. Where is the evidence that someone with a class 2 medical is any more apt to fly than someone flying a ULM (likely a much more strenuous activity than flying certified aircraft for leisure purposes.) who gets a doctors note at the beginning and from then is responsible for declaring themselves that they are fit to go. Even the insurance companies accept this.
After the rant a question.
A Brit chum with UK PPL and owning a G reg comes over here regularly. A while ago he had an incident which meant that he had to go to his AME to get cleared to fly and had to undergo a shed load of tests, all declaring him as ok and fit to fly. The AME/CAA have now agreed he can fly but only with a safety pilot, for the next year.
He had asked if I would be willing to act as his safety pilot. The safety pilot has to have the equivalent or higher qualifications than the PIC. The question is can I? I have an EASA PPL plus level 6 ELP.
You can’t be PIC on a G-reg with EASA papers, nowadays. On an F-reg, yes, but his UK papers are void for an F-reg.
The data shows that in flight incapacitation risk is insignificant. The whole game is driven by money, and to a lesser degree emotions (pilot dying at the control, passengers screaming, etc).
