PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - The Empire Strikes Back! on Colour Defective Pilots
Old 28th Feb 2015, 05:15
  #560 (permalink)  
Creampuff
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Salt Lake City Utah
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I thought that this, from the Tribunal's decision, gives an extraordinarily revealing insight into the mindset of Dr Navanthe (at least):
The evidence of Associate Professor Navathe was that a pilot’s licence goes on forever, but it is the medical certificate which enables the person to use the licence.
You see: The only barrier that prevents medically malfunctioning pilots from killing punters in a 30,000' death plunge is Avmed and its certificates.

It is a mindset that that is, evidently, almost completely uninformed - if not completely uniformed - by any knowledge of operational reality. But for the blessed intervention of the zealots on a medical crusade, apparently all of those doped up, drunk, sick, hungover and otherwise medically malfunctioning pilots would go undetected - unnoticed by colleagues, training and checking systems, ATOs during mandatory periodic checks, air traffic controllers who listen and watch them, and miraculously avoiding making a smoking hole in the ground.

Of course CASA never suspends or revokes pilots licences using administrative powers: It's left to Avmed to wield its holy certification sword as the one and only line of defence against licences that go on 'forever'.

It's therefore no wonder to me that Avmed is labouring under the misconception that their efforts are essential and make a positive difference to aviation safety.

The pilot in command of a 787 recently collapsed at the controls and died soon after in hospital. That tragedy helps to remind us what a Class 1 Medical Certificate really means: it really means that the holder has the same probabilities of suffering sudden incapacitation as the general population, CVD or no CVD.
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