Peter, I never had any of these issues. Go to a different optician – in any case YOU are the client and they have to do as you tell them.
They also won’t touch making glasses which are, ahem, “imaginative” e.g. if your distance figures are just -0.50 then making up glasses to -0.25 will still give you excellent distance vision (with -0.50, you can marginally get a Class 1 without wearing glasses) while enabling you to read the panel, whereas with glasses made to the full prescription of -0.50 you won’t be able to read the instruments. And bifocals can be tricky if you want to fly tight circuits, because of where your left eye needs to be looking.
That’s exactly what I’ve asked my optician to do – and they know I’m a pilot. Works beautifully.
I have also experienced the “anally retarded” (thanks Peter!) optician when I was buying prescription sunglasses.
I ticked the box for ‘driving’, not realising that this automatically limits the maximum tint – I think that technically you might be legal if you wore them whilst driving at night, they certainly let enough light through. I asked for an additional, darker pair for non-driving use. They refused to sell me anything darker and admitted that they thought I would use them for driving anyway, so they decided I could not have darker sunglasses in any form.
As one of the articles mentions in the US if you have any history of mental illness you cant get a medical.
I don’t know if it’s true, but if it is, then I’d suggest that all it will achieve is having people hiding their illness rather than trying to deal with it and get treatment.
If you know that being honest with your doctor will cause you some problems at work (but not end your career), but you’ll get treatment, and in a few months you’ll be much better off, you are much more likely to seek that help, than if you know that seeking that help would bring your career to a swift and permanent end.
but you’ll get treatment, and in a few months you’ll be much better off,
I am no psychologist but having been married for a chronic depressive with low self esteem for 10+ years I don’t think one will be better off in a few months, and stay that way. Depression is persistent. Hers was present since she was a teenager (so she told me; she was 23 when I met her and she was very moody back then but, I thought, no worse that a bloke should expect 
) but it can arrive later in life as a result of various things, one of which is not feeling valued by one’s peers, or just having too much time on one’s hands. The long term cure is to address those issues. There is no permanent chemical fix, whatever. Taking Prozac (or something milder) can help you temporarily but you then just sink back into it. It’s IMHO much better to really try hard to address the causes but that needs a strong will and/or friends / colleagues and tasks which keep you busy and give you the feeling that you are valued.
This pilot was only about 28 and that can be a crappy time in a bloke’s life because relationships, which are the bedrock of life, are fleeting, and one has little or no power in controlling one’s destiny. Working for a Loco one has no power at all, and living at home just makes it worse.
Also I don’t think tying GP visits into the AME channel will work, because many airline pilots go to great lengths to conceal issues and simply won’t seek treatment. I used to know a Shamani healer who was not far from Gatwick and “did” loads of airline pilots (including one Concorde captain) because these pilots suffered from all kinds of “minor” psychological issues (stress mainly) and would not see a normal doctor because it would bugger their jobs. Most already had problematic marriages, etc. He was actually brilliant in dealing with stress, though I am sure not for the reasons he gave
Working for a Loco…
Germanwings may sell cheapish tickets to their passengers but from a pilot’s point of view they are rather high end. This guy probably earned three times my bizjet captain’s salary while working half as many days as I do and with a roster that is fixed one month in advance and not one hour…
Another solution, illegal of course but one which works spectacularly well, is to get the dominant eye done for the full distance figure and the other eye done for the instrument panel
This is usually called Monovision
In my case (with natural monovison) I finds it works just well enough to fly the plane. I wouldn’t fly that way as a normal practice.
I would not suggest monovision in the way it is described in that link i.e. a reading prescription in one eye and a distance prescription in the other. That will take ages to get used to.
I would not suggest monovision in the way it is described in that link i.e. a reading prescription in one eye and a distance prescription in the other. That will take ages to get used to.
It’s taken me about 20 years so far, since one eye started going near sighted. Then about 5 years ago (inevitably, with age) the other eye developed presbyopia and lost near vision. Now for some time I’ve had a ‘nature provided’ 1.5 diopter split. As per the link, optometrists have joked with me that “other middle aged people pay to have eyes like yours”
Around the house, monovison like mine works OK uncorrected. One can fly that way, using one eye inside the plane and one outside, but I wouldn’t recommend it regardless of legalities, except in an emergency. Image sizes are slightly different with each uncorrected eye etc.
Normally for flying I correct one eye to make both see at a distance (with a single contact lens) then in addition use reading glasses that I can look over, librarian style. That’s perfect.
