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Old 1st Apr 2015, 08:22
  #2818 (permalink)  
DespairingTraveller
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
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Whereas the aim is laudable, the issue is how best to achieve it, surely. Creating an environment where people can lose their careers overnight because of the onset of an unexpected condition that may not be dangerous is at best questionable. Obvious problems include:

1) Deterring good, healthy candidates from embarking on the profession in the first place, because they judge the risk of abruptly losing their careers at some future point too high and they can take their talents elsewhere. That has the potential to depress the overall competence of the pilot pool and so increase flight safety risk.

2) Deterring existing pilots who develop mental conditions from reporting them. No-one has to attend a doctor to seek treatment for anything, and a mental condition is frequently very easy to conceal from casual discovery. You don't come out in a rash or acquire a pronounced limp...

Yes, take action by all means, if it is judged necessary after considered, informed, expert attention. Not in response to alarmist headlines whose sole purpose is to sell newspapers, not to improve flight safety.
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