Originally Posted by
Pinky the pilot
I have had more than one DAME say to me that `The less CASA AvMed are told, the better.`
Something which I find quite shocking!
I found it mildly shocking 30 years ago, but now it's said regularly, because the doctors don't trust CASA to have an appropriate response. It really applies to a lot of industries in Australia where the laws are inconveniences to business, but no one wants to do anything about it, and rather sweep things under the carpet. OH&S, fatigue management, and worker health are all areas that people tip toe around rules. One word saying report all you want, the system will look after you, and then turn the other cheek when you do and get you to jump through so many hoops and talked down to with frowning faces it deters anyone doing it unless they really really have to. As I said earlier, some of these systems make it hard to get things done, because they really don't want that to happen, but make it look like it's possible, because the have to. Arrrghh, another heart attack victim wants to be a piloot, I don't want to be responsible for another one, lets make them jump through so many hoops that they either give up, die or prove some super human feat that they are truly worthy of a medical cert and then it will be the others that proved its fault not mine...
If you flood the system with real issues, it collapses, which is what has probably happened at AvMed now. Once it's proven that most of us suffer all sorts of issues and pilots are no different then they can't operate the way they do without shutting down the whole industry and real change will happen. But that would take everyone being ultra truthful and disclosing everything.
Imagine if every pilot disclosed they had a single suicidal thought last year, what would they do? ground every single pilot until each one could be vetted for whether they intend to act on it?