Page 6 - Volume 19 Number 10

4 • TWIN & TURBINEOCTOBER 2015editor’sbriefingDo We Need A Third-Class Medical?FFor the past several years, an on-going debate has been raging about “Whenare they going to do away with the medical exam for Private Pilots?” Whenever pilots gather, there’s always a couple or three who strike up a conversation about what they are going to be able to do when the FAA no longer requires a third-classmedical certificate. A lot of them are inactive pilots, folks who want to return to flying but currently doubt their ability to pass the medical exam, or find it too daunting a task.Most Twin & Turbine readers hold a medical certificate, because they are out there flying their airplanes every day. We know the actual examination is simple and painless, hardly capable of diagnosing anything other than partial blindness or a heart attack in progress. What the FAA wants is information about your recent medical history, so it can determine if you’re likely to remain functional for another 6, 12 or 24 months. Even so, if your medical condition changes one day after the exam, you are to consider the medical certificate invalid and cease your aerial endeavors until the matter is resolved.Most often, it is the revelations of the exam’s attention to history, medications or screening that leads to rejection. As the pilot population ages, more and more of us require supporting tests and documentation to keep our medical in force. To its credit, the FAA’s medical division tries to keep relatively-healthy pilots in the air; it allows medication to control blood pressure, cholesterol, thyroid deficiency and other shortcomings, and even permits pilots who’ve had strokes and open-heart surgery to get back in the cockpit with supporting evidence of recovery. But, it takes some determination and expense to jump through the requisite hoops.Which brings us to the questions behind the interest in changing the rules; Is The Physical Worth It? Does the Third-Class medical really do any good, particularly for purely-recreational flying? After all, if you take the physical before your 40th birthday, it’s valid for five years, unless your condition changes. Or, would allowing medically-uncertificated pilots of unknown status to ply the skies create a hazard to the more-serious practitioners of aviation? What restrictions would be appropriate for flying without a medical?Non-medical piloting has been expanded from gliders and balloons to the Sport Pilot license, and there doesn’t seem to have been a noticeable rise in accidents from pilot incapacitation following the advent of sport piloting, which includes not just certificated Sport Pilots but other-rated pilots operating light- sport eligible aircraft sans medical. Which is to say, about as many medical factors are found with accidents involving sport pilots as with medically-certificated pilots. This provides fodder for the rush to abandon the medical for non-commercial piloting.In my opinion, the Third-class medical exam may as well be given by a family doctor, using a simple form supplied by the FAA; upon submission, the form can go in the FAA’s file until the specified interval is up. AME services could be retained for Second and First-class exams. All pilots would see a doctor, but not at the same level of scrutiny. When I took my first pilot medical exam, nigh onto six decades back, certification scrutiny was simpler, and pilots were probably a less-healthy group than they are today.All of us will, hopefully, become older, and we’ll become less sure of our ability to satisfy the FAA as time goes on. If Congress and the FAA decide, based on the evidence from accident analysis, that the non-commercial pilot doesn’t need a medical certificate, it might make our pleasure flying in our retirement years a little more pleasurable.LeRoy Cook. Editor