Tallahassee B727
Anyone who has followed the some forty year saga of colour vision impairment in pilots won’t need to be persuaded.
Just as it appears that the sun orbits Earth so it is necessary (not) that all pilots must have exemplary colour vision in order to accomplish their flight duties in a safe and efficient manner.
In my view the lessor colour perception of around one in ten men should not be called ‘deficient’ because it’s so common as to be normal.
Whilst we do battle with The Empire in Australia, more correctly that we continue to be steamrolled and frightened into submission, we often look longingly to the US of A where their system is light years in advance of ours. But occasionally their ‘Empire’ has a slippage, some of their crew, hopefully a tiny minority, go the path of CASA.
One memorable example concerned the remarkable Bob Hoover who lost his USA medical because the FAA decided his red nose indicated he was drinking too much. He came to Australia and performed at the Avalon Airshow, having passed our medical.
It was my privilege to watch his incredible aerobatic flying routine which terminated after his rollout off the sealed strip onto the grass, both engines feathered, and he braked to a stop placing his left hand spinner in the upraised palm of the announcer’s hand.
He exited the Shrike to be interviewed by the said announcer, yours truly hanging by the fence just a few meters away, and he forcefully announced that he was grateful to Australia and that he could now fly anywhere in the world except in the USA because of an intransigent FAA medical officer. Not long after his return to the USA he regained his medical, they were shamed into restoring his flying status.
Asked to describe how it is to fly his airshow routine, he said in his Southern drawl, “well it’s like milking a mouse with big heavy gloves on.”
But that’s another story, the colour vision saga continues because the make work salary factory must keep on finding new and complex reasons for its existence, the truth or commonsense is too obtuse to the mind when power and money are the drivers.