Originally Posted by
Mach E Avelli
There’s 142 pages just published by CASA entitled Guidelines - Medical Assessment for Aviation. Most of it is devoted to exclusions.
One of the obvious is dementia, with a comment that someone with dementia may not realise that they have it. So, how could such an unfortunate pilot self declare fitness to fly?
An observant GP would pick that up in a short conversation.
In theory you could develop symptoms of dementia 10 seconds after you walk out of your class 1/2 medical and for the next year or two be self certifying fit to fly with dementia as well. That goes for most medical conditions. Pilots already self certify on a daily basis, it's just every one or two years AvMed has to issue a piece of paper saying they took a 5 minute look at some papers and found you fit in that space of time.
BTW I know of at least one pilot who was flying with dementia, class one medical and chief pilot. It took several months of reports and a lost airplane (he forgot where he left it) to get his medical pulled.