90% of med certificates are issued at the Dr. office by the AME. So 10% is a small amount of the overall applications needing more scrutiny. I’ve read that 90-97% of those deferred ultimately get SI and only .1% of deferrals for mental health are denied…why does this take 12-18 months to come to this conclusion?
Fair enough.
It's possible to believe that the FAA is sometimes heavy handed and also that some pilots who shouldn't be flying.
Actually, at the GS rate schedule that the doctors are likely on, they are getting paid less than their straight-time hourly rate.
Sport pilots are not affected by the FAA's medical bureaucracy.
When they say fit to fly, they mean I run no increased risk compared to the general population of having another episode.
yes it is according to the letter I received from the FAA
Not true, if you are declined a class 3, you can no longer apply/operate under sports pilot either. That is until you go through the FAA's medical bureaucreacy to prove you're safe to do so and get issued at least a class 3.
True. And many of those that should not be flying are flying under unrestricted class 3 medicals. The fact that every pilot I know, including CFI/CFII's, has a list of pilots they will never fly with is scary.
Won’t fly with them because of an undisclosed medical condition that they (every pilot you know) areaware of?
Because they are inept, and unsafe pilots. Yet by the FAA's medical standards, A-ok. I'm sure you have your own list. I flew with a CFII while working on my IFR on one occasion as my standard instructor was sick, I would not fly with that particular CFII again. This was before another student told me that same CFII told him "don't report any medications to the FAA when you apply for your medical."
That's true, but non sequitur in response to a statement about sport pilots, who have no need for a Class 3 medical.
Inept and medically unfit are often unrelated characteristics. Someone can be perfectly medically sound and not be a competent pilot...and vice versa.
Browse through a few DUI threads here and you will find plenty of those who share the FAA's zero tolerance attitudes and treat getting a DUI as a moral failure, with whatever happens to you afterward as well-deserved. This is a cultural attitude which did not exist until the mid-1980s. In fact, the attitude toward DUI was quite the opposite. Penalties were low if prosecutors could even get a conviction. Something that could happen to any of us - "there but for the grace of god go I." (Yes, there were aviation-related programs, but most were focused on the airlines)
It has never been easier to get sober people to pick you up and give you a ride home if you have been drinking, On the local level, 1st time DUI diversion is making a come back now that MAD is not longer as politically active as they once were. It varies a lot between court venues.
woman who founded mad became lobbyist
I’m actually very fortunate to be among a group of pilots who are very safety minded. The only pilot I really know (knew) that I wouldn’t fly with was tangentially related to our group. He was reckless and my instructor thought his instructor was a moron. This is how he removed himself from the pilot population:
Always sad to read about accidents, but always something to learn from them as well. At first blush, no way I'd fly into that strip with any passengers/that load-out. No idea why the pilot didn't heed the owner's advice to get another 200 ft of runway, and doesn't look like the pilot used a short field, or soft field technique.
www.youtube.com
That "something that could happen to any of us ..." is the sixties mentality.
It goes further back than the 1960s and it continued well into the 1980s. I was defending DUI cases in the late 1970s and into the 90's and watched the change in real time.