Health / Food / Blood Pressure (merged)

Silvaire wrote:

Look at it from the AMEs perspective

With respect, why? The AME is providing a well paid service and in doing so should give the customer what he actually needs, not what makes himself feel good. He isn’t paid to make himself feel comfortable and risk is part of his job, and the rules that guide his job. If he doesn’t like doing his job in a reasonable way he should quit.

Any pilot should accept that they’re taking on significant risk, but I’m not sure whether risk-taking is in the job description of an AME. Certainly the aviation medical service has to formally quantify risks as best they can and justify their protocols, but when it comes to individual AMEs, I don’t know how much wiggle room they have. I imagine it might be country-specific.

Back in the old days, doctors used to examine patients and write a line ‘Fell over. Broke wrist. Pulled and plastered’. These days any patient who does the same, gets an essay. More and more these days, risk is being passed up the line from individuals to professionals – and often in an unfair way. Unless this trend is reversed (and I see no signs of this) then endeavours such as aviation will become impossible unless all the risk is put back on the shoulders of the pilot (Self-declaration medical; SSSDR aircraft that do not need a formal inspection) which seems a shame as both aviation medicine and aircraft engineers can provide valuable input. I certainly wouldn’t want to fly my aircraft without my inspector having passed an eye over it on a regular basis.

Has anyone heard of an AME being sued or otherwise brought to account after an aircraft accident, as a result of the AME previously issuing a medical certificate as a government function?

There are has been zillions of close calls of pilot incapacitating in commercial flights with 300 pax due to medical reasons (including one two days ago which was flown by one passenger off-duty), some were crashes, some were suicides in mountains or whatever, I don’t recall any of these cases where authorities, courts or public went after NAA AME or MED departments?

I can understand why an AME is s***t scared of 3rd party liability or courts when he signoff some PPL to fly sub-2T SEP…what about liability on FE/DPE to take passengers? or liability on FI/CFI to solo? or DVLA driving medical?

I guess the risks of any downsides depends if it’s private AME? or state AME?

Silvaire wrote:

Has anyone heard of an AME being sued or otherwise brought to account after an aircraft accident, as a result of the AME previously issuing a medical certificate as a government function?

I don’t know about an AME, but it was an issue for the doctors involved in this case where a lorry driver became unconscious and killed and injured many people.

It seems to me (I may be biased) that the doctors came under far more scrutiny in court than the driver.

Peter wrote:

I am sure that’s true but there are few GA crashes which are sufficiently mysterious that pilot incapacitation may be suspected. And I would bet that in every such case the autopsy is going to head for the most obvious place by far: the heart.

There are various types of autopsy, but I believe the pathologists look at all the organs individually even when there’s a knife sticking out of the chest.

Ibra wrote:

There are has been zillions of close calls of pilot incapacity in commercial flights due to medical reasons (including one two days ago which was flown by one passenger off-duty), some were crashes or suicides or whatever, I don’t recall any of these cases where authorities or 3rd parties went after NAA AME or MED departments?

I don’t know either, but in the commercial world most of them don’t end in fatalities for 3rd parties. It’s a lot easier to brush off a ‘near miss’ if nobody has been hurt. There’s even explicit recognition in the existence of restricted class 1 medicals that allow pilots to fly an airliner with 400 passengers, but not a light aircraft with no copilot, that it is acceptable for pilots to collapse at work under the right circumstances.

Ibra wrote:

I can understand why an AME is s***t scared of 3rd party liability or courts when he signoff some PPL to fly sub-2T SEP…what about liability on FE/DPE to take passengers? or liability on FI/CFI to solo? or DVLA driving medical?

There was a horrid case in the UK a few years back where an inspector got pulled apart after a microlight component failed and some pilots died. I don’t doubt that such cases are rare, but when they happen they focus the mind very sharply. I doubt there’s a microlight or light aircraft inspector in the UK who has not thought about that case and considered whether or not they would like to continue in that line of work.

The other aviation professionals who came under huge scrutiny recently were the airshow regulators involved in the Shoreham airshow crash.

In the UK there’s also a huge divergence in how deaths are investigated by coroners. A frail 90 year old goes out shopping, a kid runs into her and she falls over and breaks her hip and subsequently dies. One coroner will say ‘this happens every day. Death is part of life’ and the other will say ‘This was a violent death’ and take it to inquest.

Scrutiny isn’t wrong. Professionals ought to be answerable to somebody. But they can only be as sensible as the society they work in.

I’m not sure whether risk-taking is in the job description of an AME

You yourself described it as such.

Anybody who does anything takes risks in doing so, whether it be risks to themselves, risk of the consequences in harming others, opportunity costs in not doing something else. It’s part of being an adult.

I certainly wouldn’t want to fly my aircraft without my inspector having passed an eye over it on a regular basis.

It wouldn’t make much difference to me although a second set of eyes is never a bad thing.

Silvaire wrote:

You yourself described it as such.

Only in the context of how to avoid/minimise it.

People choose to be AMEs or not. People choose to be pilots or not. I think I’m right in saying that fewer people are choosing to be AMEs and this is presumably because the risk / reward doesn’t make it worthwhile to them.

I see no evidence of AMEs being exposed to a meaningful financial risk. It’s not zero but I don’t think its much more than zero.

Like DPEs they do however make good money, and as an AME its very little effort. The best retirement gig a doctor/pilot could come up with. Ten 30 minute medicals a week = $5000 a month in government protected play money. My last one did it out of his house, to supplement his USN Captain’s retirement pay before the FAA apparently fired him. Most of the rest seem to do it until age makes them barely functional, I had one like that in the past, about 90 years old and I had to gently remind him several times of what kind of medical I needed. He died not long after.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get one again, my insurance broker says that at over age 70 the insurers are nervous about BasicMed, but by the time I’m that age I’m guessing it will be the norm.