dubbleyew eight, correct. Remember also glider pilots fly for up to 8 hours or more in turbulence most of the time, hand flying the aircraft continuously. These folk self certify both here and the USA. The experiment has been run. There is nothing to discuss.
Oh yes, Sir Don Anderson. I once heard an interesting story about his visit to the Waikerie World Gliding contest in 1974 in the new Departmental Merlin.
As for the RAAF, we certainly aren't going be to defending Australian cities with Spitfires flown by hastily drafted private pilots any time soon.
Here's what a friend of mine found after some research:
"As at least 40% of Australia's aircraft fleet is piloted by people who simply submit a declaration that they are fit to fly (RA-Aus and GFA predominantly) and as the statistics do not support an increase of regulation in this area the underlying thrust of the discussion paper should be disregarded. For example, in its report entitled "Pilot incapacitation occurrences 2010�2014" the ATSB found::
Why the ATSB did this research
Occasionally pilots become incapacitated during flight. Incapacitations can arise from different reasons. They include the development of an acute medical condition, changes in environmental conditions during the flight, or the effects of a pre-existing medical condition. The effect of incapacitation on a pilot can be restricting their flight duties for the remainder of the flight, or for single-pilot operations, a collision with terrain.
This research report documents pilot incapacitation occurrences in high capacity air transport, low capacity air transport, and general aviation to help educate industry about the causes and risks associated with inflight pilot incapacitation.
What the ATSB found
In the past 5 years, there have been 23 pilot incapacitation occurrences reported per year on average. Nearly 75 per cent of the incapacitation occurrences happened in high capacity air transport operations (about 1 in every 34,000 flights), with the main cause being gastrointestinal illness, followed by laser strikes. In the majority of the occurrences reported, the incapacitation was severe enough for the pilot to be removed from duty for the remainder of the flight. With multi-pilot crews in high capacity operations, these occurrences usually had minimal effect on the flight.
Low capacity air transport and general aviation had fewer occurrences with a wider variation of causes of incapacitation. These ranged from environmental causes, such as hypoxia, to medical conditions, such as heart attack. Furthermore, 70 per cent of pilot incapacitation occurrences in general aviation had an effect on flight operations, namely return to departure aerodrome or collision with terrain.
In other words 6 pilot incapacitations per annum for low capacity air transport and general aviation would be beyond the predictive capabilities of medicine.
In fact, the ATSB report "Accident Occurrence Statistics 2005-2014" do not record pilot incapacitation as an accident or incident cause so the claim that "70 per cent of pilot incapacitation occurrences in general aviation had an effect on flight operations, namely return to departure aerodrome or collision with terrain." may be without foundation."
Note the Gastro-intestinal and laser strikes, neither of which are going to be predicted by an aviation medical. Neither are hypoxia and hyperventilation, the latter of which I suspect as a cause of otherwise unexplained accidents.