The ATSB has created 2 reports into pilot incapacitation in flight. If AVMED had real interest in improving safety, it would work on the identified issues from the top down. The things that CASA get hung up on and harass pilots with daisy chaining requests for medical tests do not appear on the ATSB list at all.
These days AVMED will argue that pilot incapacitation due to medical conditions is not on the ATSB’s list
because of AVMED’s intervention to save us all from dangerously unfit pilots and their dangerously incompetent GPs and specialists. That is a confusion of correlation and causation, but it makes intuitive sense to the public. That, and cognitive bias, keeps Avmed in a job. The contemplation of dying in an aircraft crash results in a natural over-estimation of the probabilities of the crash and cries for preventative intervention which Avmed is happy to provide.
The single most likely cause of pilot sudden incapacitation identified in ATSB’s reports is gastro (I’m paraphrasing) and, in many of those cases, the pilot cannot continue to perform duties. Can anyone cite the regulation which deals, in detail, with the preparation, testing and consumption of food by RPT flight crew immediately before and during duty? Surely there’d be one somewhere in the thousands of pages of regulations, given the safety implications.
Ask passengers on an RPT jet whether they would be scared if the flight crew are about to be given orange juice and a ham sandwich for lunch.
Ask the same passengers whether they would be scared if the flight crew have a colour vision deficiency.
That’s why Avmed generally gets away with what it does.