Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner. In order for a physician to state you are unable to perform flying duties they must be a flight surgeon. An FAA flight examiner only qualifies the doctor to certify if you meet the medical QUALIFICATIONS required by the FAA. They may not certified or trained to provide a medical diagnosis of your ability to actually perform your flight duties. That is why as pilots we self certify that we are physically able to perform our required flight duties.

The military flight docs go and fly in the aircraft and familiarize themselves with the aircraft and missions the pilots they treat operate. That way they are better able to evaluate the ability to perform the mission. The flight docs in the military or those civilian flight docs providing flight surgeon service to government agencies cannot be sued for their aerospace fit to fly diagnosis. Unless it's changed, a civilian doctor cannot get regular malpractice insurance to cover aerospace medicine beyond the basics of FAA flight examination. As a result no civilian doc should ever give you a fly or no fly diagnosis, unless they are very specifically trained including completing a residency in aerospace medicine and were previously board certified as aerospace surgeon. (the vast majority of military flight docs did not complete an aerospace medicine residency)

This is a very, very small group of possible physicians that can provide us with a note stating that we are or are not physically capable of performing flight duties. Of course all of that assumes when we see that doctor, we are actually still suffering from whatever made us unfit for duty. If we get asked for a note a couple days after we call in sick, then we make an appointment for a week or so from then; I'm not sure what limb the company wants the doctor to go out on to speculate on whether or not we were fit for duty at some time in the past.

This latest policy almost smells like the company has an outside insurance policy to cover "sick" expenses beyond a certain threshold. If I had such a policy, I'd want the ability to document the sick so I could collect. Just like the Miami Heat have coverage to pay for Chris Bosh's paycheck now that he is "sick". Hmmmm