PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - The Empire Strikes Back! on Colour Defective Pilots
Old 5th Nov 2014, 06:00
  #494 (permalink)  
Creampuff
 
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The important issue with that is that there is no limit on the test which can be asked for for any person with any kind of disability. There is an unlimited scope for CASA to ask for a test. The fact that it may or may not be - when I was talking about policy, I was talking about policy to demonstrate that you meet the standard. Once you do not meet the standard anyone in CASA for any test that they wish which will help to make the determination as to whether or not is, you know, at the extent where it does not affect the aviation safety.
Ah, the exquisitely circular reasoning typical of those on a crusade.

Until a candidate has undergone a test that simulates an operational situation, in terms of CAR 67.150(6)(c), you don’t know whether the candidate meets the standard set by law in Australia. And if a candidate passes a test that simulates an operational situation, in terms of CAR 67.150(6)(c), the candidate has demonstrated compliance with the colour perception standard set by law in Australia. Full-stop. Irrespective of the opinion of any zealot on a medical crusade.

By law, you can’t impose “any” test. There is, in law, a “limit”.

The law says the test must simulate an operational situation. That means what it says.

What it doesn’t say, and what it doesn’t mean, is the CAD test – which doesn’t simulate operational sh*t - or some other glorified colour perception test that bears no semblance to any realistic operational situation encountered in the real world.

The test – as least for pilot candidates – must simulate a safety-critical task involving the identification of the meaning of lights that happen to be coloured, with all of the same cues that would be available in the real world (subject of course to ‘normal’ emergencies), without characteristics that bear no semblance to anything encountered in the real world. The pass standard must be that achieved by the pilot population without colour vision deficiency, in the same test. Otherwise, the test is just another glorified game to find out what is already known.

My ongoing worry is that, notwithstanding Dr N’s departure, there remain people in CASA who understand all of this, perfectly, but who may have encouraged or assisted, either positively or by acquiescence, the CVD crusade so far.
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