I cannot agree more. At the time my primary doc was also my AME, he was appalled that Delta was asking this of us. His point was that we are responsible for hundreds of lives along with a multi-million dollar machine, yet our company wants verification of my illness. He brought up HIPAA and that it is poor of the company not to trust us.

A few months later I am on MIL leave for a couple of months. During that time I get a bad head cold. I felt not my best, but that I could get through the day, so I went into work the next duty day. After I got there, I was told to go home until I was well so I did not get everyone one else on the floor sick. They did not say that I needed to go to sick call that day and see the flight doc, just to go home, get better, and if you are still sick in the next 2 days, go see the doc for meds.

Bottom line for me is we are not working a 9-5 desk job. We operate a big complex machine, and if there is an incident no matter if it is minor or major and they find you are self medicating or not at the level you should be to operate the machine, you WILL be held responsible and pay accordingly. Depending what happends, this might be losing your job or possibly jail time. That is the way I look at it in today's new world. I was once not this jaded, it just takes one instance of you or a friend to change your mind. I just hope Delta gets a clue on sick leave and stops punishing the 97% for 3% I have heard are abusing the system. It is probably the same 3% that helped create the MIL leave log that we must now fill out on the company holiday "black out" dates.

But then again for the bean counters, it comes down to money for the shareholders. They just never think what it would do to the company, God forbid, if we have a bad accident, so do not let it happen. If you are sick, please call in sick and break the chain!