Contact lens and medical

I wear contacts.. I have since the AirForce approved contact wear for
aircrew in the early 90s. For my civilian medical I have never been asked to
remove them. I have told the AME I have them in. My Class II says,
corrective lenses required for distant vision.

It is recommended that you keep a pair of regular specticals handy (within
reach) while flying, just in case you have to take one out. I only had to do
that once while flying in the Air Force.

The Air Force flight docs would want me to come in wearing my contacts,
check my vision, remove them and put on the specs and check it again. I had
to be able to go from 20/20 or better with contacts to 20/20 or better with
my glasses.

One year, my glasses were out of date, my vision was good with contacts but
not the glasses. I got a waiver from the Command Cheif Medical examiner to
fly until my new glasses arrived. I was the only qualified and current
navigator in the wing after a recent stand down. I was the last to fly
before the stand down so I had the most recent flight currency date.

Needless to say, the normal 2 week wait for new glasses turned into 4 days.

BT

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote in message
ps.com...
I just got my new medical. When I got the certificate I saw that under
limitations it said "None". My previous medical used to say "must wear
corrective lenses". I should have simply walked away with the
certificate, but instead I asked them why that limitation was missing.
The response was "You wear contacts? Well, that changes everything. You
should have told us about the contacts". The FAA form does not ask
anything about wearing lenses (except near vision), and they did not
ask me about it during the exam either. I thought all that mattered was
your corrected vision, not uncorrected vision. In the end we had to do
some extra stuff to get that fixed, and I got another certificate with
the correct statement. She said that I should stop wearing contacts for
24 hours before coming to the medical exam, and bring the lenses with
me. I have never heard of this before. Anyone else had similar
experiences?