I need some woman-ly can of advice. it seems that my girlfriend who wants to be an airline-pilot has now begun to sufer from occasional fainting spells during that special time of the month. What sort of advice can you girls give me and my girlfriend about what sort of problems she can expect once on the line, or maybe with her medical? Im curious to know if any of you gals have this sort of issue too and maybe have a cure for the fainting spells. The doctors say her blood is fine and eating habits too, but could be the stress and hormone imbalance during "those days". Any help would be greatly appreciated and well, thanks in advance!!

-Poorpilot

I'm not a girl, but since no one else has chimed in...

Any sort of incapacitation is grounded until resolved. Presumably there are are hormone or other therapies for this sort of thing. If she wants to persue flying she should:

1) Get the issue treated, to a level that is acceptable to aviation medical standards.

2) Then (and ONLY then) go see an AME for a first class. Bring ALL of the relevant records with you.

You probably need some professional advice. There are various services staffed by ex-AME's which do that sort of consulting. I have used this one, other folks here can recommend others: http://www.aviationmedicine.com/

I am a girl, but not a doctor; however, I used to have fainting spells too when I was younger. My doctor also said there was nothing wrong with my blood and it was not debilitating in any way. A little anemic that was made worse by the monthly thing. The whole thing got better as I got older and eventually went away completely.

As rickair said, try to get it treated or at least alleviated. Try a change in diet, exercise, other methods of stress relief.

Interesting...we just had a flight attendant about a month back complaining of the same thing. I'm not sure if it was associated with the monthly visitor, but she pulled herself off the trip because she said she was getting dizzy and light-headed on the first couple flights, and it wasn't the first time it had happened.

FA's don't need medicals, so they can basically come back to work when they decide they feel better, with no accountability for whether the problem might recur.