Guys, I am a Captain with an airline flying jets in the Southern Hemisphere. I have many thousands of hours flight experience and have been flying now for over twenty years. I have not once experienced issues with colour deficiency in my professional aviation career.
I have sat the CAD test and have failed. Previous to this I have sat many colour vision tests, some I have passed and some I have failed. The tests I have consistently passed with 100% pass rate are any practical environmental test. I have passed PAPI test, tower gun tests and a pratical flight test during day and at night, I do not pass the CAD however.
As I have said, I have sat the CAD test and have failed. The CAD test has zero relevance to a pilots environment. For one, it's a synthetic light test done in a synthetic environment asking the applicant to to distinguish rapidly moving coloured targets in the dark after your eyes have had time to adjust. Please explain where in aviation would you ever have to distinguish multiple coloured lights moving rapidly in a controlled synthetic environment? But hey, I'm just a mere professional pilot with no idea about colour and aviation, I should leave that to the non colour deficient, non professional pilots that designed this test.
The CAD test is only good for distinguishing if the applicant is in fact colour deficient, that's all.
As a professional aviator we use an assortment of visual cues to establish whether we are safely "on approach". In the modern day cockpit we have many tools at hand, not just the PAPI lights. We must utilise all the tools at hand to safely fly an approach. On CAT2 and CAT 3B approaches you do not even use the PAPI as guidance. We certainly don't confuse ourselves with rapidly moving lights.
As professional pilots we adjust to our environment, much like colour deficient drivers having to distinguish traffic lights. You might see the lights as a slightly deferent colour, but your brain learns to adapt to your environment of which we work, day in, day out.
Military pilots have been navigating safely on night vision goggles for many years now without incidence. Night vision goggles do not display colour.
I have contributed to the legal challenge in Australia and suggest anyone who is pursuing a professional pilots career in the future should do the same. Google CVDPA.
Last edited by Fruet Mich; 6th Jun 2014 at 21:43.