Earlier last month, CVDPA Director Dr Arthur Pape spoke at the Australasian Society of Aerospace Medicine annual conference held in Adelaide. A reproduced copy of his presentation is below:
From the
conference website, the abstract of the presentation was:
The Colour Assessment and Diagnosis (CAD) Test: An Ishihara by another name?
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) is responsible for aviation safety, carrying out its responsibility using various methods. These include:
(i) Mandating regular medical tests (minimising risks of, say, cardio-vascular events that could render aircrew incapable of safe piloting); and
(ii) Mandating regular flight-simulator tests (ensuring pilots can cope safely with unexpected events while flying).
CASA also implements the Aviation Colour Perception Standard (ACPS) which since June 2014 has included the CAD Test. In February 2015 the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) granted a colour-vision-defective pilot who had failed the CAD Test all privileges of the Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL), concluding, in essence, that CAD Test performance was irrelevant in determining whether the pilot could fly aircraft safely.
I elaborate on this AAT decision. I do this by showing a video of the CAD Test in action, and using this to highlight crucial aspects of the Test that provide compelling evidence for the proposition that while the CAD may be an excellent test of defective colour vision, it is not a test of potentially defective and unsafe control of aircraft. That is, the CAD Test is not an operational test, a point acknowledged by Professor J. Barbur, a co-developer of the Test, in his AAT evidence.
I conclude by asking why CASA has not considered using a version of an operational test already in its armoury (see Point (ii) above) in its implementation of the ACPS.
