Originally Posted by
e6bpilot
I have never heard of LOM. I thought the title of the thread had something to do with holding at the locator outer marker.
I have never heard of any pilot at this company having any issues with triggering disability and denied medicals. It's pretty simple...company paid loss of license insurance kicks in after the elimination period once a medial is denied. You use sick and STD (paid by the pilot) to cover the gap and then LTD (pilot paid) to offset loss of earnings.
Now, our disability combo isn't without issues. Due to some IRS ruling, if you are tax free disability (most pilots are), the currently 17 and soon to be 18 percent NEC is paid as cash and does not go into your 401k. Chief pilots have stopped being able to use discretion to pull trips without pay, meaning that some pilots trying to manage sick banks take it in the shorts during the elimination period. Those are probably the two biggest. There are some others for specific circumstances. I would say, though, that under our new contract, our disability programs are pretty good. If a pilot really works it the right way and buys the right combo, they can be set if they are forced to retire medically.
I am not talking about it being denied. The term is FAA hold. More and more items can no longer be decided by your AME and must be ok'd by the FAA. This is where the hold comes from. You have now started the process to renew your medical so your current medical is no longer valid. However, you have a hold on it as the FAA must decide as your AME can not. Usually this requires additional information that must come from specialist and submitted to the FAA. They then take a month or two to decide and you either get your medical, get a special issuance, or are denied your medical. It is in this limbo period where you are screwed. Our plan only covers when your medical is denied, not in a hold. We have a handful of pilots in this situation right now and you can not use your PTO days as it doesn't qualify for FMLA and we are required anyways to notify the company when this happens, so technically if this happened before a vacation period, you couldn't even use that time as paid time off. This is become a bigger deal now. It seems you are almost better off having your medical denied by your AME versus being placed on hold and being deferred to the FAA.