Patronize if you must, but my intent isn’t to vent (although my frustration & fear of the ultimate result due to what seems to be a very broken process are very real), but instead it’s to better understand the apparent voodoo of the SI process.
Also, I mentioned that 2 HIMS AME’s said they could get me through the process, so there’s plenty of hope...unless both AME’s just see me as a walking dollar sign for themselves & their peers who would conduct the extensive evaluations.
Some of the evaluations that are deemed medically-necessary are comically antiquated at best & were never relevant at worst and I understand results of the the FAA-required evaluations (supposedly specific to each individual case, if I’m not mistaken) are outright ignored by the decision-makers at the Administration at times, instead favoring their personal, errrrr professional judgment. Why is there minimal-to-no objectivity involved? Why doesn’t the FAA (Physical Standards) have the resources to do their job & instead pushes that off to others? (Is the FAA the approval authority here or not???)
Thanks for your help, but all you’ve done is point out the same concerns I shared originally.
Originally Posted by
Excargodog
Take a deep breath. Good, you were able to vent.
Some of what you say is true. We are talking a federal bureaucracy and the people who are granted the discretion to exempt you from the rules do cover their rears, because they worked long and hard to get those positions and one GermanWings like incident, and they are not only a mort as far as federal career goes, they are probably unemployable in any job requiring malpractice insurance, and that’s likely the case irregardless of whether they actually effed up, or just got blamed for something totally unrelated.
Without knowing your specific problem, none of us can tell you how realistic (or unrealistic) your expectations are. Clearly you’ve tripped a wire. That may be because you have a problem that is simply NEVER going to get a Special Issuance, like you having bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. That’s not your fault, but likewise not theirs either, and they simply aren’t going to approve you.
Of course just because you were DIAGNOSED with those conditions, doesn’t necessarily mean you even have them. Local MDs toss around diagnoses pretty loosely (look how many kids are diagnosed with ADD, H€||, look how many people are overprescribed OxyContin). Just because it’s in the record doesn’t necessarily make it real, and it takes time to sort these things out. And yes, it often takes a knowledgeable advocate to research the history and make the argument, because the FAA simply doesn’t Have enough physical standards people to sleuth out and get that information for everyone desiring a Special Issuance and every minute they spend on you backs up the next guy that much further.
That’s simply the reality.