Um, no. Fortunately we have a control group. When glider and balloon
pilots were looked at in the US they had about the same rate of
medical incapacitation accidents as pilots with aviation medicals.
One study actually came out a little lower but probably not significant.
Australia has around 11,000 pilots (RAAus and GFA) who don't for the
most part have aviation medicals. There has been no suggestion that
this is a problem. The ATSB report medical incapacitation
accidents/incidents that were actually such weren't picked up by the medicals.
Yep, nice way of transferring money from pilots to doctors but that
is about it. The main significant opposition in the US to reform was
the aviation medical examiners. As they couldn't produce any good
evidence that they were doing any good they lost.
Now we have the two countries whose aviation heritage Australia's
came from having reformed the private flying medical. There is a
suggestion that something like this has also happened in New Zealand
but I don't have the details yet.
The medical for private pilots is mere CYA and virtue signalling by
bureaucrats and vested interests.
Private aviation is dying and this is one of the reasons why.
You might also like to contemplate that in the case of sudden
incapacitation when driving a car you are far more likely to damage
property and innocent third parties than in an aircraft. Aircraft
crash all the time for all sorts of reasons (98 vs 160,000) and how
often is anything significant on the ground damaged? Cars seem to end
up in houses with monotonous regularity.
Mike
At 04:55 PM 1/11/2017, you wrote:
Hi Mike,
>CASA has a discussion paper up on medicals, released just before
Christmas, but as usual is making a mountain out of a molehill
despite there being an ATSB report showing that medical
incapacitation from 1975 to 2006 was 98 incidents/accidents out of
160,000 and some of the 98 are intestinal distress(food poisoning),
hypoxia/carbon monoxide poisoning (maintenance/operational causes),
breaking F/O's collarbone during emergency evac of a 747, getting
hit by prop or rotor blade on ground etc. Doesn't actually leave
much particularly when you realise that most of the remaining
actually had a Class 2 or Class 1 aviation medical.
Only 98 medical incidents out of 160,000. Must mean that the medical
health screening had been working between 1975 to 2006!!!
If most of these are from gastro, perhaps pilots need food safety training!!
(Runs and hide... Again...)
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