These members screwed themselves, I’m not compromising my integrity to shield them from their own folly. I was the Board President for an FEB where the pilot officer before the board had a history of failures and very nearly put a plane in sea killing all on board. Would you expect me just let a poor performance continue? If an officer told you, as their commander, to pound sand and refused to maintain medical and flight qualifications, should just roll over and let it pass?

Some posters here seem to think all military officers are either integrity challenged or pricks for holding subordinates to account. Well, which is it? To tell the truth, there are a spectrum of officers and pilots just like anywhere.

GF

One of the things which has consistently impressed me the most in military leadership is the ability to have the integrity to take a standard seriously and to hold it. If the military were a plant, integrity would be the cell walls that give it structure and strength. Take that away, and there's nothing.

Honor counts for something.

It counts for everything.

Without a counterbalance it has no meaning. One who has honor needs no penalty to oppose, but one who lacks it most definitely needs the other side of the coin, and failure to apply it obliterates the meaning. Lip service is mindless and without meaning. Accountability gives meaning. Those who have honor and integrity understand this all too well and rise to the occasion. Those who lack the honor and integrity to do what they ought tend to whine that they've been "screwed."

Such comments say more about the speaker than the person holding them accountable.

..........

I like how his immediate response is to throw civilian pilots under the bus.

I hate the framing too- “he didn’t know there needed to be an explanation for checking yes on disability payments”. As if there aren’t questions that ask if you have the specific conditions he’s receiving disability for.

also dude is kind of an idiot since sleep apnea is by far one of the easiest special issuances and usually is issuable by your AME at your medical with follow up paperwork sent to the feds.

What is the procedure for the sleep apnea issue?

Get diagnosed or get told by your AME to have a sleep study done, get on a CPAP, prove compliance over like 60 days and forward to the feds with a a statement from your doctor.

Here we go again, 5,000 ex-mil under investigation for discrepancies between FAA and VA records...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...s-va-benefits/

Might be time to lawyer up if this applies to you, may be able to defuse the situation with pre-emptive disclosure of past omissions.

Also, you could still be in jeopardy even if retired with a lapsed medical, for however long the statute of limitations runs.

Looks like the word is getting out about the FAA 'Medical'. Pandora's box?


“The FAA has known for two decades that tens of thousands of pilots are probably flying with serious undisclosed medical conditions, based on past investigations and audits, and experts who have testified before Congress.”

“Joseph LoRusso, a Colorado-based aviation-law attorney whose firm has fielded “hundreds” of queries from military veterans under FAA scrutiny since July 2022, said it is an open secret that “probably greater than 85 percent of pilots are lying on their medical forms” because they don’t want to flag conditions that might drag out approval or renewal of their licenses.”

"The FAA has known about flaws in its medical screening process since 2005, when inspectors general at the Transportation Department and the Social Security Administration — in an investigation dubbed Operation Safe Pilot — uncovered a scam that had run undetected for years.

About 3,200 pilots in northern California were collecting Social Security disability benefits, claiming they were too sick to work, but reporting to the FAA that they were medically fit to fly. Many worked as commercial pilots even though, under the law, those receiving disability compensation from Social Security can only work limited hours.

The U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco prosecuted 45 of the most serious cases for fraud and related charges, winning convictions or guilty pleas in all of them. Officials said they could have prosecuted hundreds of additional pilots, but the cases would have clogged the justice system."

“The exams run short, often less than an hour, and the vast majority of exams are approved. The aviation medical examiner’s goal is to get pilots in the air and keep them there, physicians said.”

Wait, are you trying to say that FAA medicals are a joke, run in cash-only operations by the people who are most likely to ask the fewest questions about your health?

I did this link as a "gift" article so hopefully it's not behind a paywall. I'll do some bullet points in case it is. It's a long article:

https://wapo.st/44rvV0z

5,000 pilots suspected of hiding major health issues. Most are still flying.

-Military Vets who told the FAA they're healthy enough to fly but failed to report they're collecting VA benefits for disabilities that could bar them from the cockpit.

-VA investigators discovered the inconsistencies 2 years ago but the FAA has kept many details secret from the public

-FAA investigated 4800 pilots, half the cases have been closed. 60 pilots who posed a "clear danger" were ordered to stop flying in an emergency basis while records are reviewed.

-600 of the pilots under investigation are licensed to fly for passenger airlines.

-FAA has allotted $3.6M to hire medical experts and other staff to reexamine certification records for 5000 pilots

-FAA and DOT have refused to comment

-at least 10 pilots have been prosecuted since 2018, 2 were prosecuted after they crashed aircraft.

-the FAA's probe has intensified in recent months

-AOPA is calling for an amnesty, ALPA did not respond to request for comment

-after resisting more than a decade transportation officials agreed to share pilot records with VA investigators

-Aviation Law Attorney Joseph LoRusso says "it's an open secret that probably 85% of pilots are lying on their medical form because they don't want to flag conditions that might drag out approval of their licenses.

I might believe 08.5%

I still scratch my cranium when reading this stuff. Withholding (not entering on MedExpress) any prescription meds taken, when you have visited (last 3 years) a medical provider, and/or not listing any medical disabilities (from VA Disability awards) is just plain stupid. Pilots doing this deserve what’s coming to them … and they are looking hard.

Same here, 85% seems ridiculous.

The AME isn’t the threat. The forms are air tight now. Report everything, about everything, and at all times. Fraud on the applicant irrespective of the AME if something gets unnoticed during the exam. Unnecessary groundings by incompetent AMEs is less likely when the FAA requires deferrals for just about everything so they can decide.

The funny thing about the article is that this is a likely a far more rampant issue amongst other people (I.e. no VA disability) than it among vets. It’s just easier to find the conditions that the person is trying to hide when you’re receiving disability. The system is a joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsXcMhPu6To

https://www.faa.gov/ame_guide/app_pr...story/item18/y

Item 18-y is a yes or no

If one federal agency is paying you a disability, and you are seeking a medical from another federal agency, and you say "NO", you might as well gift-wrap and hand-deliver the easiest possible FAA violation (or worse, false statements/lying on govt forms criminal case) to the FAA.

I know. Don’t know why someone would try to hide something so easily discoverable. The people I am referring to are those with underlying medical conditions for which aren’t receiving some kind of disability. That number has got to be yuge.

I am sure it is. Just like people with illegal cable TV boxes is huge.

But the ones with illegal cable TV boxes, who call the cable company to come over and check their connection, is in a special group indeed

He’s been in the CPO or Willis almost his entire career. Does he even know how to fly an airplane anymore or does he just know how to collect the paycheck?

The "system" most certainly is not a joke.

The article concerns veterans, specifically because of unreported VA benefits, and consequently no documentation to support the ability to hold a FAA medical condition, with that disability.

The FAA doesn't give a tinker's damn if someone is drawing money from the VA, or whether the VA gives a disability rating: the FAA will make up their own mind, according to FAA standards. However, if an applicant has claimed a disability, the FAA does need to know about it. Those who fail to disclose are in violation of the regulation. Those who do disclose either do, or not not meet the medical standards for an FAA airman medical certificate. If documentation is provided to show compliance with the CFR and that one meets medical standards, then one is issued a medical certificate.

Anyone that claims a disability benefit, whether military or not, is required to report that on the medical application.

There is no need to pursue enforcement action against those who fail to report disability benefits, if those individuals have not applied for, and are not receiving disability benefits.

If someone has applied for disability benefits and has a condition which is disqualifying for an FAA medical certificate, then hopefully the money they're getting for their disability is worth it.

JohnBurke - you always provide very well thought out and informative answers. Are/were you an AME at one point?

TLDR. The “system” is what is the FAA class I medical. It’s a cash-preferred racket paid to the people who are least likely to inquire as to your actual health. It’s the best case against age 67.

Bull

Regs are one thing. Enforcement another. Everybody got an angle. You any different?

There's no good case against age 67, least of all a medical one.

Medical scrutiny increases as one ages, under the FAA. The interval for the EKG, for example, or even the requirement for the EKG.

Age 60 as a retirement age for airline operations was never based on medical guidlines that showed it as a limiting factor. It was political.

Age 65 set a higher age limit, but also was not based on medical data showing it as a science-based limiting metric. It was a political increase, not limited to 65 because valid data showed that older would be harmful or would post a greater hazard, but to stay within international convention.

The quest to expand slightly to age 67 represents a broadening of the political limit, but likewise does not represent the ceiling of an acceptable health range; there is no valid reason to exclude age 65 and age 66 pilots from working.

Age 60 pilots are subject to medical screening requirements, as are age 65 pilots, as will be age 67 pilots.

It's interesting that while the first class medical is as low-key and non-invasive as it can be, and presents as little jeopardy to one's career as possible, individuals would whine that it's not invasive enough, or doesn't present enough jeopardy. Why pay so much for such a short exam? We need longer exams. Why pay so much for an examp that only asks questions about one's medical history, does an EKG, does a vision test, checks blood pressure, listens to the chest, looks at hearing and vision, and then let's one go? Perhaps if you're healthy, that's all it takes.

Ask anyone who has any kind of an issue on their medical, just how mch of a "joke" it is. When the medical is a quick process every six months, one ought not whine that it's not harder, takes longer, or is in some way more of a jeopardy-event. If it turns out you're not healthy, or have a medical wrinkle, then medical certification can turn into a nightmare, depending on the degree by which one is impaired or unable to meet the standard.

The more recent article cited (Washington Post) includes a statement by an attorney, who speculates, without evidence, at the percentage of pilot applicants who fraudulently apply. Other than an attorney's opinion, there's nothing to back up that wild assertion. If one were to suggest that the medical applicaiton is a "joke" because a large percentage of applicants get away with supplying false information, and one could back that up with actual data, one might have a leg to stand on. Therefore, back it up.

After extensive practice, I gained some skill at opening and applying a bandaid, and eventually came to master applying just the right dab of neosporin. That I can do so at altitude is purely coincidental. Does that count?

lol probably more qualified than some of the quacks out there

If I understand you correctly, that is exactly my point.

You made my point. The only way to scrutinize people to a degree that doesn't count on their truthful admission of health conditions that are not currently subject to discovery on the Class I, would to make the exam more thorough. Even then you're probably not going to catch everything, but probably more than they do today.

Responsibility for accurate reporting belongs to: a) airman medical applicant b) airman medical examiner c) FAA aeromedical branch d) all of the above

e) Mr. Magoo:) Best case against 67 or whatever they’re up to here, just too friggin long in the tooth. The job demands marathon endurance. Performance to the limit of younger crews. 80 plus hours worth. Over & over & over

Or just get rid of HIPPA. All this beating around the bush for who? No more depending on application integrity. No more discussion about an AME’s subjectivity. No more discourse on the need for a more stringent exam. And no more expecting a soon to be 66 year old from fully disclosure when they have nothing to lose (loss of license? give me a break) and 500k to gain from concealment.

At least in this case, the cats out of the bag and half the airline industry would be grounded. And the TRUTH, that the FAA can’t administratively do it’s job and make “decisions” on all the required deferrals they claim are needed.

You can do a more thorough exam, but to what end?

Two obvious concerns, cog/coordination decline and sudden incapacitation.

I tend to think that recurrent sim should catch the former, although if you really wanted to you could use a PC based video game to test basic attitude instrument flying with some other multi-tasking activities thrown in. Of course somebody would make a very close facsimile of the FAA software and everybody would practice before their medical. Such a test could be dialed in to be fairly easy for any normal pilot, and tuned only to flag somebody with real clinical decline. In theory. In practice it might disqualify 5-10% of the pilot workforce, and make another 30% really sweat their medical. Devil is in the details.

For sudden incap, it's a bit easier. Determine the likely causes of sudden incap (should already be well documented), perhaps tweak that to be aviation specific if you have aviation specific data... that would be useful because obviously the current system isn't good at catching it. Most of the news report about pilot incap seem to involve cardiac issues, frequently between age 40-60. I'd guess a lot of sudden incap in the general population is due to diabetics losing control of their blood sugar... we do get tested for that, unless your AME is committing outright fraud.

Then determine what additional tests can practically screen for whatever your top statistical incap risks are. If I had to guess, I'd say a treadmill stress test and maybe cholesterol test. A stress test would actually be good IMO because it would tend to force some folks who really need to into regular exercise. That's good for cog health in addition to cardio, blood sugar, etc, etc.

121 aviation generally is certified with a 10^-9 safety factor... they should probably start with that and work backwards from there. That's how they certify airplanes and operating procedures.

An individual human body tests are not 10 ^-9. Not even the old astronaut tests.

But the odds of both pilots failing on the same flight must be better than that. And just because a test failed, doesn't mean there was actually a grounding condition that got missed. Even if you have a grounding condition, and it got missed, doesn't mean you'll stroke out in flight. If you do, the other guy will just land asap. Layered defense.

I can only think of two instances in modern 121 where both pilots were incap. One involved loss of pressurization (not in the US), the other involved guys wearing turbans. Neither were caused by pilot medical issues.

10^-9 is the safety factor for the entire enterprise combined... hardware, software, pilots, ATC, external nav systems, etc.

IIRC that's the allowable threshold for fatal accidents in 121. The UAM folks wanted to use a threshold that was a couple orders of magnitude less.

It would seem that there are some who, lacking any qualification beyond a keyboard at their fingertips, would like to dictate to the FAA and to the aviation medical profession how to do their jobs. A doctor who provides a Class 1 medical is performing a rip-off because it wasn't strenuous enough, wasn't exhaustive enough, wasn't (fill in your favorite bull **** adjective) enough, when those keyboard commandos have neither the authority, nor the training, nor the understanding, nor the liability, nor the legal duty (okay, "liability" is a buzzword for legal duty, but it's more of a mouthful if they're split in two), to sign off a medical certificate. These geniuii (multiple genius's) want do do the AME's job for them, and then the FAAs after that.

The physician, who is acting as an authorized agent of the Administrator in making the medical evaluation of one's fitness, is charged with making the determination. Not joe blow, not al, the wonder-pilot, but Mr. AME. Let them do their job. If the AME feels that the pilot is fit and falls within the guidelines, so be it. The AME isn't certifying one to climb Mt. Everest, or to run a four-minute mile, or even medically qualifying him or her to be the world tostada-eating champion four years in a row. Just to sit in a seat and push or pull a few buttons and survive. That's about it. Can the person do their job as a pilot and be expected to do it within the scope of what's encountered, or anticipated to be encountered, during the course of the job during the course of the medical certificate. Can the AME put his name, and practice and authority on the line by signing that pilot off, and fulfill the scope of his duties representing the FAA Administrator? Then be blessed young jedi, and go forth and jerk the gear and swing the prop or fan. You are authorized. That's it.

Don't make it more-harder than it's gotta be. When we preflight an airplane, we're looking for a reason that it can't go. If we don't find one, then we wave our paws in the sign of the holy fuel truck and the airplane has our blessing. When we inspect an airplane as mechanics, we look for things that ground the airplane, things that are not airworthy, and we make note of them and fix them before the airplane maybe pronounced free of evil and rats, and send it on its merry way. The AME does the same when looking us over, and in absence of one's head sewn to one's kneecap or a heart beat that sounds like a drunken drum solo, or an infected molar leaking out our rectum, then we're released to soar with the eagles and hopefully return to fork over another two hundred bucks to the waiting AME. This doesn't mean the inspection isn't thorough, or adequate, but it's left to the judgement of the guy who went to medical school to make that call, not Pilot Chuck Yeagerite. By convention and by law, that's the way it is, and it doesn't represent corruption, nor a wild-assed guess about the majority of pilots falsifying their data, nor even folks trying or managing to "get away with it." It's a doctor doing his job, a simple exam to determine that the applicant meets the medical standards set forth by the Administrator. That's it.

Don't try to make it more than it is.

If you read carefully I'm not dictating anything, just discussing some additional measures they *could* hypothetically take, and the costs and ramifications of doing that.

People advocating tougher medicals probably don't realize that's most likely going to start with an annual cardio stress test, which is somewhere on the uncomfortable to painful spectrum (if you're not a competitive endurance athlete), and will cost several hundred dollars. Fringe benefit: If you're going to have a cardio event, good chance it will happen on the stress test, so the AME can apply CPR and AED while the ambulance is on the way... as opposed to 2.5 hours out from Midway Island.

We don't seem to have a problem with sudden incap, so I don't see a need to change anything. The current issues in the news appear to be experience related, maybe aggravated by chronic fatigue from high ops tempo?

Exactly. Redundancy. Redundant engines, redundant pumps, redundant instruments. 10^ -5 with two gives 10^ -10, as an example. This assumes independent, unrelated failure root causes.

I wasn't referring to you, or to your comments. Otherwise, I'd have quoted you.

Well, yes and no. That safety factor (or as they say, extremely improbable) is used for failures where the result is catastrophic. Pilot incapacity in a two-pilot plane is not a catastrophic event, and thus does not need to be certified to that standard.

Total aside. Human interest.

The Six Sigma Handbook (Quality) was edited by Forest W. Breyfogle III. Why has he been interested in Quality?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_G...-air_collision

The TWA Flight Engineer in the crash was his father, Forest W. Breyfogle Jr.

What started as the tragic death of his father, grew into a passion of preventing airplane accidents, and quality in general.

“Brey”, his father and the entire family, were active members of the church I grew up in.

All redundant systems, taken together, get factored into the total. I imagine that would include pilots, have no idea how they calculate it.

General population health stats?

Stats on inflight pilot incap?

Actually I don't think I've ever heard of a dual pilot medical incap in an airliner, ever. Maybe they just assume that since it's never happened, the odds are low enough to be well below the certification threshold so as to be statistically insignificant. Ignore it in other words.

Although they have to use some kind of math when they make changes to pilot medical certification policy. If nothing else to justify on paper whatever wild idea they pulled out of their butt.

Many years ago - back even before my time - a Wing Commander at an overseas USAF base landed his F-4 and had a heart attack on the roll out. The WSO called a medical emergency when his front seater became unresponsive and got the aircraft taxied to the arm/dearm area where the fire/rescue/medical people extracted the pilot who couldn’t be successfully resuscitated. This occurred only two weeks after the man’s annual flight physical - which HAD included an ECG which - even in retrospect - had been totally normal.

Against the recommendations of some of the medical personnel and all of the statisticians a policy was implemented for all fighter pilots that an Exercise Treadmill Test be included in the annual flight physical for all currently flying fighter pilots and that all personnel showing an “abnormal” exercise treadmill test be referred to the aeromedical consult service, the USAFs central point for difficult problem cases. There those people would be further evaluated.

Those opposing the new policy cited as their reason something called Bayes Theorem or the Law of conditional probability. Not to get too didactic, what this means is that any medical test has a certain percentage of false positives and a certain number of false negatives and there generally isn’t an actual “normal” or “abnormal” except as defined by the desired sensitivity and specificity of the test. Generally speaking if you tweak the sensitivity up you get more false positives while if you tweak the sensitivity down you get fewer false negatives. And with specificity, it’s just the opposite. If you tweak the specificity up you get fewer false positives at the cost of more false negatives. But what really drives the predictive value is the actual frequency of the disease/illness /condition in the population being tested.

If I recall correctly (from a paper I wrote for squadron officer school years ago) the policy lasted about a year and a half and generated just over 200 referrals for further evaluations. All personnel over 35 (a minority in the actively flying fighter pilot community) needed to agree to a cardiac catheterization before they could be returned to flight status.

The program was abandoned after about 18 months and they reverted to the old rules because all but one of the “positive” treadmills in the group turned out to be false positives and that one true positive also had an abnormal resting ECG and would have been picked up under the previous criteria in any event. IIRC, some small number (a half dozen or so) fighter pilots were lost from flying because they refused the cardiac catheterization (which back in that era carried somewhere between a quarter and a half percent MORTALITY). I believe they were all allowed to go to two pilot cockpits though in tankers, transports, and bombers. Whether any ever got back into TACAIR I was never able to discover.

But anyone recommending tightening of medical standards really does need to understand Baye’s Theorem. Doing the “right” thing is not intuitive.

https://youtu.be/HaYbxQC61pw?si=QeQDCZbVeBL6Cz-9