Re: CAA Medical Licence


David Cartwright wrote:
With regard to the medical requirements, the current rules are actually
reasonably well balanced.

I can't agree, at least not with respect to GA which is what I'm
interested in, of course it's fair enough that a commercial pilot
should have stringent requirements. I've yet to hear any argument why
flying a small light aircraft should have significantly greater medical
requirements than for driving, and the NPPL shows that others agree.

The NPPL is a UK-only concept. Under its restrictions you can't fly outside
the UK.

As I said before, what difference does a line on a map make to medical
requirements?, if it's good enough here it should be good enough across
Europe.

you can't get an instrument, IMC or night rating, etc.

There's no reason you couldn't have a more stringent medical
requirement for extra ratings, if it could be shown that the rating
made greater medical demands on the pilot.

and thus the CAA made what I think is
quite a sensible decision to adopt this as the NPPL medical standard. If you
ask me, this choice was a success on the part of the CAA - they broke the
habit of a lifetime and adopted an existing standard instead of stubbornly
doing their own thing!

I quite agree, so why are they not either applying this same standard
to JAR PPL's if they have the power or at least arguing within Europe
for it's adoption?, instead of stubbornly grounding people for minor
conditions which don't warrant it and making they jump through
beurocratic hoops to get back in the air.

Because you can't legislate for every individual condition. What if, for
instance, someone has a condition that doesn't present a hazard when flying
on a nice day, but which might be a problem when navigating at night, in
cloud - even if it's down to a human-factors-related thing along the lines
of you being 100% busy trying to fly and navigate, and your sore arm proves
a distraction?

The day they ban people from driving for having a sore arm and make
them get specialist's reports before returning their licenses is the
day I'll agree with you on this 8-).

You can of course have an extra licence requirement for something like
night flying, or turning it around have an endorsement on a licnese
that bans night flying, just as my driving license has (along with many
people's) an endorsement 01 banning me from driving without glasses.

Like most people I have a European driving license, it allows me to
drive anywhere in Europe without a medical, relies on voluntary
notification of changes in my health, has medical requirements that are
British and differ from those of other member states yet is accepted
freely by those member states. It doesn't stop me from driving due to
petty issues that have no significant affect, and has a system for
limiting my driving depending on my medical limitations.

Now what on earth would be wrong with a similar system for licensing
the flying of light aircraft for leisure?. If the CAA also revised the
syllabus to cut out the crap, and unburdened the industry financially,
we could have a growing GA scene instead of one in terminal decline.
Greg

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