AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2017 - 22

PILOT COUNSEL

BY JOHN S. YODICE

Bob Hoover's fight
Defending against FAA enforcement
IT IS WITH SADNESS that I write about the passing of aviation legend R.A. "Bob" Hoover ("Aviation Legend Flies
West," p. 34). You will see many well-deserved tributes
to him. I will try not to duplicate them. Rather, I feel
compelled to offer from my personal experience just
one of his positive inﬂuences on FAA enforcement procedures that has greatly beneﬁted pilots. This column
is unavoidably critical of some in the FAA and NTSB.
There are many dedicated civil servants in these agencies, many of whom are good friends, who should not
be tarred with this criticism.

Hoover's grounding proved to be unjustiﬁed.
The problem was that there was no effective way
to challenge it.

JOHN S. YODICE,

along with famed
attorney F. Lee
Bailey, represented
Bob Hoover in his
battles with the
FAA.

22 | AOPA PILOT January 2017

Faithful readers of this column know of its attention
to pilots' rights in defending against FAA enforcement
seeking suspension or revocation of a pilot's FAA certiﬁcate. Often such enforcement is accompanied by an FAA
determination that an emergency requires the immediate grounding of a pilot. The "Hoover law" brings due
process to the FAA's earlier abuse of its unilateral emergency authority to immediately ground a pilot without
ﬁrst affording the pilot a chance to defend him- or herself.
Hoover's case is notable for a number of injustices committed against him, just one of which was the
"emergency" aspect of the revocation of his FAA medical certiﬁcate. Common sense eventually prevailed
and the FAA (under a different administrator) restored
his medical certiﬁcate to him-but not before he was
grounded for two and a half years in the United States.
During that time he performed airshows in Australia
and elsewhere, demonstrating how wrong the FAA was.
His case started when two FAA inspectors secretly
reported Hoover to the FAA's doctors, saying he did not
look well during performances in June 1992. The doctors, based on this report two months after the fact, asked
Hoover to submit to an extensive and expensive medical
evaluation. They never checked with the many people
who interacted with Hoover during the airshow, or the
thousands who saw his incredible performances.
Hoover complied with the FAA request. To know
Hoover as the gentleman he was, and his goodwill

toward all, is to understand his willingness to comply.
At some embarrassment to the FAA, an FAA-selected
doctor concluded that Hoover was ﬁt to hold his medical
certiﬁcate. But that wasn't the end of it. The FAA's doctors
sent the report to a consultant-one who never personally
examined Hoover-who gave the FAA the opinion it was
looking for. Even the medical condition that Hoover was
supposed to have had-a "cognitive deﬁcit," a thinking disorder that makes him unable to safely pilot an aircraft-is
so nebulous that it could be attributed to almost any pilot.
Easy to charge, expensive and onerous to disprove. The
FAA asked Hoover to surrender his medical certiﬁcate. In
good faith and thinking he had to, he complied.
But, he did ask for another chance to demonstrate
his medical qualiﬁcation. He once again went through
an exhaustive evaluation by another set of doctors
picked by the FAA. He once again emerged with a favorable report that was once again overruled by an FAA
consultant who never personally examined Hoover.
The love of ﬂying still burned in his soul. He did
not give up. He endured a third round of evaluations.
However, Hoover was then advised that he was not
legally obligated to have surrendered his medical certiﬁcate, and was advised to ask for it back. With no legal
basis to refuse, the FAA took the only step it could to
prevent the return of the certiﬁcate: It issued an order
revoking the certiﬁcate on an emergency basis. The
FAA order asserted that an emergency existed requiring
Hoover's immediate grounding-even though he had
ﬂown 33 more airshow performances between the June
1992 airshow and the time he surrendered his medical
certiﬁcate, all without a hitch. How would safety have
been compromised if Hoover had been allowed to continue to ﬂy while he appealed his certiﬁcate revocation
to the NTSB, which is the usual procedure?
The NTSB had no jurisdiction to review the emergency aspect of the FAA's action. Hoover could appeal
the emergency aspect only to the U.S. Court of Appeals,
which the precedents show almost certainly would defer
to an "expert agency" on a safety issue. Under the law as
it was then, Hoover was required to remain grounded
while his appeal was heard at the NTSB.
On appeal, his case was referred to an NTSB administrative law judge, who had extensive legal, judicial,
and flying expertise. The judge allowed Hoover to

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2017