As I’ve noted before, MI, the medical standards haven’t changed in years. All that changes is the people and their personal opinions in CASA.
There was a brief period of enlightenment during which CASA administered the OCVA as a ‘third tier’ test. That occurred because there was a critical mass of people who understood their job was to implement the legislated means of demonstration of compliance with the legislated medical standards. Now there’s (again) a critical mass of people who believe their job is to implement their personal opinions on the colour vision requirements of the ICAO convention.
The CAD does not simulate an operational situation in fact. Everybody knows it.
Why do the zealots nonetheless pretend it does? Because they can. They know how prohibitively stressful and expensive it is for individuals to challenge them. And the zealots will die on the stupid hill of defending the CAD when that challenge comes. (This is one of the reasons the AvMed ‘service’ metrics are abysmal. They spend so much time on their personal crusades rather than their jobs.)
Don’t be fooled into believing the ACVA is some panacea. The zealots will only take the results of the ACVA into account after the candidate has already failed the CAD and therefore been assessed as not meeting the colour perception criterion. The ACVA is just an exercise in data gathering and justification for the restrictions that will be placed on you.
The zealots’ plan is that you will have to endure the expense and inconvenience of the CAD and the ACVA. You will then be extraordinarily lucky to get a medical certificate allowing you to fly at night.
CVDPA member Simon Choice passed the OCVA and the ACVA but AvMed still imposed a CVD-related ‘restriction’ on his medical certificate. Please read that sentence as many times as is necessary to convince you that you need to start fighting for yourself along with CVDPA.