What GA needs

"Jon Woellhaf" writes:

Jeff Dougherty wrote
... The third class medical doesn't do much more than
make sure you won't have a heart attack or seizure at 5,000 feet ...

I believe the third class medical -- or even the first class medical --
provide no assurance whatsoever that you won't have a heart attack on the
way from the doctor's office to your car.

Indeed. In the Canadian regulations someplace, they describe the
intent of the medical exams as to reduce the probability of an
in-flight incapacitation to something like 1%. For the higher levels
of certificates, this is assumed to be under conditions of higher
stress/intensity/endurance - considering commercial pilots as flying
harder (physiologically speaking) than private pilots.


- FChE

On Sep 12, 1:37 pm, "Jon Woellhaf" wrote:
Jeff Dougherty wrote

... The third class medical doesn't do much more than
make sure you won't have a heart attack or seizure at 5,000 feet ...

I believe the third class medical -- or even the first class medical --
provide no assurance whatsoever that you won't have a heart attack on the
way from the doctor's office to your car.

Someone posted their story here a while ago about having to get a
special psychiatric evaluation just because he happened to mention to
the FAA that he had a psychological evaluation when he was an 5-year
old (or something close to that age). There is no doubt that the FAA
medical process is unnecessarily bureaucratic and has grounded too
many perfectly fine pilots. A fairer system would be to do away with
medicals except for those who fly for a living. Just like we do for
driving. To my knowledge, it has never been proven that medical
incapacitation is a leading cause of aviation accidents.

Andrew Sarangan wrote:

To my knowledge, it has never been proven that medical
incapacitation is a leading cause of aviation accidents.

Well, that could also be interpreted as supporting the medicals: After all,
medical incapacitation isn't a leading cause of aviation accidents, so the
medicals must be doing a good job of preventing
medical-incapacitation-caused accidents.

We need data on the frequency of medical incapacitation accidents in the
absence of medicals in order to really be able to make a point either way.

Ad.

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Adhominem writes:

Well, that could also be interpreted as supporting the medicals: After all,
medical incapacitation isn't a leading cause of aviation accidents, so the
medicals must be doing a good job of preventing
medical-incapacitation-caused accidents.

We need data on the frequency of medical incapacitation accidents in the
absence of medicals in order to really be able to make a point either way.

We can get those numbers from automobile accidents. How many accidents are
caused by sudden incapacitation of automobile drivers? How many are caused by
drivers having a sudden heart attack or seizure?

Jon Woellhaf writes:

I believe the third class medical -- or even the first class medical --
provide no assurance whatsoever that you won't have a heart attack on the
way from the doctor's office to your car.

There have been cases of airline pilots dying suddenly in the cockpit from
severe cardiovascular disease even though they had passed their stringent
medicals. The medicals worry too much about some things while ignoring
others.