speedislife88

My situation is as follows, I am an airman in the air national guard with about a year left of college, i am working on my Instrument rating and am planning on flying for the guard after college and OTS.
Unfortunetly my eyes are not good enough to fly in the air force the way they are now, and thus i am planning to get the PRK eye surgery. I have done much research and have talked to flight docs and medical personal and have heard quite a few different things, and have heard horror stories of people getting lasik and PRK, not following proper procedure and in turn being disqualified from entering pilot training.
Does anybody know of or where I can find the proper steps and procedures I need to follow through the military in order to ensure I am not disqualified from flying. I have already visited the eye doc, and he has determined that I am a candidate for PRK and my eyes would be corrected to 20/20.
thanks for any help or information.

joepilot

My understanding is that PRK is only normally used if you are not a good candidate for LASIK, such as thin corneas or very severe myopia. The healing process is much slower with PRK than with LASIK, and it takes several months for the vision improvement to settle to its final value.

My wife is a pilot, and she had PRK two years ago, and is quite happy about it.

Joe

rickair7777

PRK is approved for military pilots and some applicants (with many caveats).

Last I heard, LASIK is generally NOT approved for military pilots or applicants, but some services have been conducting test programs. If you are not part of the test programs, it's no good. Also I believe that only current pilots, not applicants, were authorized to participate.

LASIK is better, but there was concern that the flap cutting could weaken the cornea and allow damage due to overpressure (ejection, explosive munitions, etc)

speedislife88

I appreciate the responses, in my research I was told that if you were to get LASIK you would not be allowed to fly an ejection seat aircraft, due to the weakened cornial flap, this may have changed since i talked to the flight doc but i did not want to close any doors to certain airframes due to an operation.

thanks again

rickair7777

Generally the military requires applicants to be medically eligible to fly ANY aircraft in the inventory...that way they can assign students according to their needs at the time, without worrying about folks who are limited to certain airframes.