AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2011 - 48

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• Aircraft with four seats or less; • Not for hire. The data have always shown that glider and balloon pilots, who are not required to have third class medicals, actually have fewer incidents of medical incapacitation than those who do undergo the exams. And now, AOPA and EAA are armed with seven years of experience from the Sport Pilot category. In all those years, no accidents— zero—were caused by health problems. “The experience with sport pilots and LSA shows what we’ve long suspected,” said Kristine Hartzell, AOPA manager of regulatory affairs. “The driver’s license medical standard introduced by the FAA demonstrates a basic level of health. Beyond that, pilots are capable of determining whether or not they are fit to fly—and

are only 212 recreational pilots on the FAA registry. AOPA and EAA propose allowing recreational, private, commercial, and ATP certificate holders to utilize the driver’s license/self-certification medical exemption for flights limited by aircraft size and type of operations. For example, a singleengine aircraft with 180 horsepower or less, four seats or less, and fixed gear in operations limited to day, VFR, and with only one passenger. Instead of a third class medical, pilots would simply take an online course that goes into much greater detail on matters such as flight physiology and identifying medical conditions that could incapacitate pilots, and use that information to assess their fitness to fly prior to each flight. (That course would be available free of charge to all pilots via the Air Safety Institute.)

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“Many GA pilots like to fly with a friend on good-weather days in simple, single-engine airplanes. Doing away with the third class medical requirement would be a major benefit for them.”
additional educational training on medical topics will enhance that even more.” AOPA and EAA will ask the FAA for an exemption in early 2012 for the changes. There is no deadline for an FAA response, but the associations will keep pushing. “Many general aviation pilots like to fly with a friend on good-weather days in simple, single-engine airplanes,” Hartzell said. “Doing away with the third class medical requirement would be a major benefit for them. It would allow them to keep flying safely, and give them the option to remove the burden of the third class medical.” If the description of the type of flying and kinds of airplanes listed above sounds familiar, that’s no coincidence. The limitations are identical to those for recreational pilots. The recreational pilot certificate came about in 1988 with the backing of AOPA in an effort to expand the pilot population. But the FAA’s insistence that recreational pilots hold thirdclass medicals and perform almost all the same training tasks as private pilots—but with many more limitations—prevented the category from living up to its promise. Today, there
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“The educational program we are proposing will go well beyond the traditional topics of spatial disorientation and hypoxia,” Hartzell said. “It will help pilots identify a variety of medical conditions that could affect flight safety.” The AOPA/EAA exemption won’t ask for any new FAA rulemaking—a cumbersome process that can take many years to complete. Instead, the associations are seeking an exemption from existing rules. AOPA and EAA are in the final stages of drafting the exemption, planning to present the strongest case to the FAA. After the exemption is presented to the FAA it is unknown how long the decision process—to approve, deny, or amend— will take. “The threat of not being able to fly is a big deal to me,” Fox said. “It would mean the end of a part of my life I’ve absolutely loved and shared with my entire family as long as I can remember... Now if you could just make the new rule so that it would allow me to keep flying my [220-horsepower] Stearman, well, that sure would be great.” Email the author at dave.hirschman@ aopa.org.

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2011
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AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - November 2011
