DFC
People claim that the hearing requirement for the IR is unnecessary. Chuck Yeager once said "I may be deaf but isn't that what volume knobs are for?" Thus I can sympathise with them when talking about single pilot operations. The medics however claim that the hearing test is not simply a measure of current ability - it allows for reductions before the next test.
You need to look at the detail of the JAA audiogram requirement.
The site at
http://www.jaa.nl/jars_npas/jarsec1.html
doesn't seem to work for the individual documents, so I am writing this from memory. The doc is JAR-FCL3.
The initial limits are -20db max loss at each of the several specified frequencies. So, you could have one perfect ear, and one which is -21db. No IR.
The renewal limits are -35db (IIRC) max loss. So, you could have one perfect ear, and one which is -36db. No IR.
It is quite common for deafness to be in just one ear, and it doesn't affect flying communications. They may as well have a spec on the size of one's toes, to operate the brake pedals.
Moreover, an ATP can get a renewal at
-34db R
-34db L
and at anywhere near that level he would be completely unable to have any kind of social conversation. That's comparable to the attenuation of very good expanding foam earplugs. A lot of headsets cannot take the power required to compensate.
It's obvious why the renewal limits were set so lax: many old jet pilots are very deaf indeed. They get away with it because when you are flying JFK-LHR every day, you know what will be said well ahead, and the workload is minimal anyway.
In any event, in something like this there should be a "demonstrated capability" route.
Just another example of the "let's find a way to keep this just for the elite" philosophy. It should be "let's let people fly unless they have a handicap which makes them unsafe".
Needless to say, all of the above cases meet ICAO commercial license requirements, and I dare say many 747 pilots flying into Heathrow would fail the JAA renewal audiogram, never mind the initial.
It's just a joke.
The IR gives pilots the privilege of being able to fly at night without having completed any night take-off or landings within the past 90 days.
Hmmm, sure about the above? Any PPL with a NQ can do that. It's pretty hard to fly without a takeoff and a landing.
That makes it difficult to see. More important then that the pilot seeing that light can differentiate it from the stars or ground lights that may also be seen.
Stars can be coloured too, though it takes exceptional eyesight to see the colours clearly. Just as it takes exceptional eyesight to detect the colour of an aircraft light until it is pretty close. And a ground light which is say 30nm away will appear steady for a long time too. The need to see colours at night, for an IR, doesn't wash. And if it did, one could have an IR restricted to day only - what's wrong with that?
I wonder how many people are told that they can not be an electrician because they are colour blind? What do they do? Do they try to get the wiring systems changed?
An electrician always works in VMC. A stupid example, anyway.