HIMS Pilots

[Principal]

Someone recently mentioned to me that there are appx 400 pilots flying that are in the HIMS program. To me that sounds like a small number compared to the "thousands" that apply for their medical through the program. Can anyone vouch for that number?

I'd be curious how many start in HIMS, try to supply everything the FAA wants and then just get burned out by the constant waiting and back and forth.

 

[lbfjrmd]

sound low to me too

 

[Jeff Oslick]

Aren't there a lot of airline pilots that are managed by their own internal programs? They might not show up in a cursory look at the numbers.

 

[Tools]

Quite a few in the GA world. Probably mostly due to AME ignorance, followed by FAA incompetence. Really tough to say real numbers or percentages.

another good question would be how many because it’s “too onerous” for either the person either a problem who simply doesnt want to comply, the person who shouldn’t be there and therefore won’t comply, or simply due to either the AME or FAA simply making it harder than it needs to be. My gut feeling these are fairly equal.

400 is nearly certainly a low number. Do keep in mind until recently, the entire pool of HIMS folks renewed every 4 years on average.

there are still plenty of folks in the 121 world who simply quit flying because of the aggregious nature of HIMS.

 

[JimBirk]

another good question would be how many because it’s “too onerous” for either the person either a problem who simply doesnt want to comply, the person who shouldn’t be there and therefore won’t comply, or simply due to either the AME or FAA simply making it harder than it needs to be. My gut feeling these are fairly equal.

400 is nearly certainly a low number. Do keep in mind until recently, the entire pool of HIMS folks renewed every 4 years on average.

I wonder what effect BasicMed has had on the number of HIMS pilots in the GA world? I imagine that a significant number of GA pilots who were in the HIMS program could have moved to BasicMed.

 

[flyingron]

I guess that depends what you mean by HIMS pilots.

HIMS as the original program was a system to return substance abusing pilots back to work. The FAA has later subscribed parts of the system (specifically the network of HIMS AMEs and specialized providers) for other specialized issuances. 400 is probably a likely number of airline pilots currently operating under the system.