CASA CLASS 5 Medical self-declaration - from 9 FEB 2024
 

https://www.casa.gov.au/licences-and...on#Eligibility
Online applications will open 9 February 2024
There's an online course to do via Aviationworx.
Let's see who gets the first one and how long it takes. I'll be there.

Pleasantly surprised Update Thurs 5pm 8th Feb.
The course is there, and I've just done it. It takes about an hour. Have not completed the assessment part just yet.
So congrats to CASA for actually coming through with the required course, on time.

Update - later on 8th Feb.
Completed the online quiz - carefully, I got 100%. Took just under an hour to go through it carefully.
It's not super complicated, it is 100% possible to get 100% first go. DON'T GUESS the answers, prove them to yourself, it is 100% possible.

Good luck folks. I shall apply for my Class 5 tomorrow. I will report back again on how it goes. I might even dial in at 12:01am! Nah- screw that.

UPDATE 9 FEB:
I HAVE MY CLASS 5 MEDICAL CERTIFICATE!
I honestly did not think I would ever see this, at all, let alone so early into this year.
Congrats to CASA, a small step in the right direction.

Of course there’s a course. How uniquely Australian. There’s an effing course for just about everything. What could possibly be in this course? Oh wait, ai forgot, simple **** everyone knows anyway.

I mean really?

In fairness to CASA, the US BasicMed system includes a course and quiz, after which the candidate has to complete and submit a form to the FAA.

But US BasicMed allows up to 6 POB (including pilot), MTOW of 6,000 pounds and IFR...

"The fact that Australia is the first jurisdiction where pilots will not have to see a doctor or medical practitioner made it difficult to find comparative data on the likelihood of impairment or a related accident." - CASA Briefing February 2024. Why is Pip Spence and CASA continuing to lie about this "fact"?

The FAA BasicMed system also requires a physical exam with a state-licensed physician, using the Comprehensive Medical Examination Checklist, hence, to me, seems more closely aligned with the existing Class 2 Basic.
https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certifi...tion/basic_med

Class 5 requires no check-up with any medical professional of any kind - not even a GP! I realise that's the same as RAAus, but isn't this a step too far? Perhaps designed to fail so CASA can say to GA in general "we gave you what you asked for and look what happened!"??

Maybe because (a) it's true and (b) no other country would be so stupid as to not require at least a check-up by a doctor every year or five?

UK CAA Pilot Medical Declaration.

Possum1 is correct.

My view is that the UK PMD system is currently better than US BasicMed. UK PMD is, in essence, a declaration that the pilot reasonably believes that the pilot meets the medical requirements for a Group 1 (Car) licence. The pilot doesn't even have to be the holder of that licence.

We're so "stupid" as to not require at least a check-up by a doctor every year or five to hold a driver's licence in Australia. We all need to try harder not to pretend that being an ordinary pilot is so special as to require 'special' medical requirements. There are always bureaucrats standing by to help in that regard.

Well, Class 5 doesn't even require that:
[Emphasis mine] That's like trusting a truck driver to not be sleep-deprived and high on drugs before he crashes, killing four police officers... but never mind. Let's go!

WTF has that got to do with assessing yourself before flying? It’s what you do now except you don’t have go to a doc every few years. Works perfectly well for RAAus and gliding and they don’t have to do a course.

Maybe the scrip writers who produce her "briefings" are setting her up to fail? She won't be the first!

I'm with Piper on this issue. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear (though if CASA Avmed can be kept out of the process, there would be less to fear). What's wrong with seeing a GP every couple or so years to run a basic assessment and issue a piece of paper to insert in your licence?
Seeing a GP occasionally may even identify an issue that could ultimately prolong your life.
I would also be quite comfortable with all road users having to do a basic medical for intitial issue of a drivers licence and another medical examination at some later stage in life. Where I live we don't even do an eyesight test at age 80, which is all in the name of 'no age discrimination'. I am rapidly approaching that age, and right now my eyesight is borderline Class 2 medical standard, which means it's also marginal for driving, so I am getting it fixed at considerable expense. Many drivers don't, because the law does not mandate a test, and so put others at risk every time they are on the road.
Same with some pilots - if they are not compelled to do something, they'll go into denial mode. With these types the whole 'self assessment' thing is a crock.
The first time some fat fool concealing or unknowingly having a medical condition carks it in flight and takes his grandkids out with him, or plows into the local school, CASA will scrap this and serve up something we really won't like.

There's been several cases of class one holders testing positive to drugs, alchohol and I can say many pilots have flown fatigued just to 'get home' or 'get the job done'. I know several class one holders that have had cardiac events within months of having ECGs. Class one medicals do nothing to stop these events they only control what happens afterwards once the case is known. Which is usually after the problem is solved so AvMed need not get involved. Heavy vehicle drivers are under the same scrutiny, you have to notify your local licence issuer if you have certain conditions and they will possibly notify you of licence cancellation until certain tests are complete. If you drive with a known prohibited condition you will be punished heavily and if someone dies as a result you will be charged with manslaughter. It's just with pilots you have to notify AvMed of your condition or you can choose to hide it and hope your medical professionals don't dob you in.

What stops a airline pilot flying severely affected by drugs or alchohol, not just damp, but the multitude of other people they have to work with who will notice the condition. What stops an outback Chieftain freight pilot from the same, nothing, the same as the truck driver.

The best person to assess your medical fitness is YOU!

The rules should be self certification with heavy penalties for not following disclosure rules.

There's only one area I disagree with full self certification and that is fatigue, as airlines can weasel the rules to make it difficult and almost punitive to use fatigue leave. So the rules need to be tight around mandatory rest periods and lengths of duty. FRMS as it is is a joke, compared to truck driving duty limits.

PS, just remember every time you take that overtime payment and extend into overtime tired, that data is captured by your companies FRMS which then extends the parameters by which they can roster you. Every time you call in fatigued within a normal roster cycle it shrinks the parameters. So doing lots of overtime tired is really going to count against you in the long run, so think about how much that OT is really worth over a long career.

i have many doubts about whether any organisation is likely to allow their aircraft to be hired by a pilot with essentially no medical clearance at all. I think it highly unlikely that any insurer would approve.

Really? RAAus schools have been doing that for over 40 years, and gliding clubs for even longer. Insurers go by the stats and the stats don’t show RAAus aircraft and gliders falling out of the sky due to medical issues.

Meanwhile, the UK CAA has just finished consulting on proposals to further simplify its Pilot Medical Declaration system. That system was introduced in 2016. Insurance has been a non-issue.

I think the biggest overlooked problem today is blood pressure medication. The very first thing to go is sensitivity in your feet. I am in no doubt that this medication is responsible for the wrong pedal, too much accelerator events we are experiencing almost every day and at an age we wouldn't normally expect that to occur.

Exactly. So if self-declared Class 5 medicals become a thing and are deemed by all to pose no risk to safety vis-a-vis Class 1 and 2 then what's the point of seeing a DAME over your local GP? And why not get rid of the Avmed oversight and ditch Class 1 and 2 altogether?

Shouldn't Class 2 Basic be good enough to cover commercial ops and let everyone else go free??

Softly, softly catch a monkey... Can't expect the beast to roll over in one sitting and give up all it's power.

Apart from astronauts, fighter pilots and (maybe) aerobatic pilots, there’s nothing special about ordinary pilots that cannot be comprehended and dealt with by a competent GP. AvMed has created its own faux speciality and club, off the back of ICAO and the cognitive bias of average members of the public.

Objective data is slowly prevailing over damaging AvMed overreach, but there are plenty of egos and pockets milking aviation medical certification. The path to enlightenment continues to be a long, expensive and stressful slog.

(I was looking again at ICAO Annex 1 Chapter 6 (medical requirements) the other day and was reminded of gems like paragraphs 6.3.2.6.1, 6.4.2.6.1, 6.5.2.6.1, which say for class 1, class 2 and class 3 respectively:

Quote:

---

Electrocardiography shall be included in re-examination of applicants after the age of 50 no less frequently than every two years.

---

I’m sure there remain zealots out there who would love to inflict that requirement to the letter in Australia, but fortunately the objective data has (mostly) prevailed.)

There's several types of medication for blood pressure, with several different mechanisms of operation. If you are getting side effects like loss of sense ask your GP for a change.

I've just done the online course (successfully thank god) so go for it

Having completed the course, are you sure you're safe to fly?!? No high blood pressure? Anxiety?? Profuse sweating during the test??

Maybe you need to see a GP.. or I'm sure there are a bundle of under-appreciated DAMEs out there who would be happy to charge you a bucket-load of your hard-earned instead. :E

Where are these listed:

Someone told me the answers were more accurate on Google than Chat GPT.

There’s 142 pages just published by CASA entitled Guidelines - Medical Assessment for Aviation. Most of it is devoted to exclusions.
One of the obvious is dementia, with a comment that someone with dementia may not realise that they have it. So, how could such an unfortunate pilot self declare fitness to fly?
An observant GP would pick that up in a short conversation.

In theory you could develop symptoms of dementia 10 seconds after you walk out of your class 1/2 medical and for the next year or two be self certifying fit to fly with dementia as well. That goes for most medical conditions. Pilots already self certify on a daily basis, it's just every one or two years AvMed has to issue a piece of paper saying they took a 5 minute look at some papers and found you fit in that space of time.

BTW I know of at least one pilot who was flying with dementia, class one medical and chief pilot. It took several months of reports and a lost airplane (he forgot where he left it) to get his medical pulled.

Among the many illogical aspects of an endeavour that should be driven by pure logic and cold data is the assumption that compulsory medical examinations are the primary way in which risks caused by medical conditions are 'trapped' and, conversely, that having identified some 'exclusionary' condition in a person, the person is somehow prevented from flying. How is someone with dementia capable of remembering and carrying out all of what's necessary to commit aviation? Assuming someone with dementia has enough remaining capacity to be dangerous, how does identifying their condition (and even revoking their medical certificate if they have one) of itself stop the person doing dangerous things with aircraft?

The substantive 'trap' for risks caused by medical conditions is personal responsibility and checking and training and flight reviews and colleagues and family and friends and other contextual factors. An observant GP would indeed pick up a patient with dementia in a short conversation, but in most cases the GP (or DAME) will be the last person in the patient's life to find that out. In circumstances in which those contextual factors are lacking, no medical examination or certificate revocation is going to stop someone from flying if they are minded to, whether due to demented confusion or clear headed intent. There are people who go flying, deliberately, without the medical certificate required by law. Most of them survive, and the ones that don't survive usually spear in through a lack of competence rather than some medical condition.

Yep, a dementia sufferer could simply forget they have no medical and go flying in their own airplane even with mandated medicals. If you were to tighten medical requirements because of the extremely rare events of non compliance, then you end up like speed limits. That is, a stretch of road has several high speed accidents where cars traveling in excess of 200kph crash and cause deaths, so the limit is reduced from 100kph to 80kph. Will that have any effect on the road toll, no, because if the rate of excessive speeders remains the same on that stretch there will still be accidents. Or totally unrelated the excessive speeders may have already killed themselves so a reduction of deaths occurs on that stretch with no relation to the limit.

My primary concern with the current class 1 and 2 certification systems is the perverse incentive not to tell CASA anything or - worse - not to seek medical advice when in doubt, for fear of CASA's damaging overreaction if it finds out. Ms Spence said, straight-faced to a Senate Committee, that she believes no such incentive exists. Her PMO is aware of studies of thousands of pilots that demonstrate otherwise.

The difference being that reducing the speed limit in the above example actually does achieve something: it makes someone somewhere feel good that they've (a) recognised the problem and (b done something about it. Maybe not anything useful and probably pissed a whole lot of people off in the process.. but they've done something nonetheless.

That is the main problem, I could think of a great deal of pilots I've known over the years that have kept details from AvMed, some with grounding medical conditions, or at least would require thousands of dollars of tests to prove what we all know just by working with them, that they are 100% safe. I think the answer to alcohol and sleep questions is probably fudged on 90% of forms, or the other stupid questions that no one would ever answer yes to, but most of us, if not all have done.

Before every medical renewal I anticipate that something new and crazy will come out of ‘left field’ and, true to form, AvMed delivered again: The new question about the applicant’s ethnicity.

When CVDPA met with CASA to discuss AvMed’s return to the dark ages on colour vision deficiency, we touched on the unrelated issue of the ethnicity question. The PMO said that the question was about the assessment of the applicant’s cardio-vascular disease risk – ironically, another ‘CVD’ – and that the question was voluntary. When I asked what the consequences would be to the assessment if an applicant chose not to answer, I don’t recall getting a precise answer.

Last Tuesday I went to the DAME for my medical certificate renewal examination. At the point at which the DAME asked the new ethnicity question in the MRS, I said:

“I find that question offensive. What if I don’t answer it?”

The DAME said:

“Then we can’t finish the questionnaire and renew your certificate.”

There was nothing on the MRS screen stating or even hinting that the question is voluntary. And given that there was nothing on the MRS screen to that effect, it’s unsurprising that there was also nothing about the implications of not answering.

I am therefore not surprised at the DAME’s interpretation in the circumstances. The DAME proceeded to guess my ethnicity and answer the question for me.

The answer to the question, or a non-answer, must affect CASA’s assessment of the applicant’s cardio-vascular disease risk, otherwise asking the question would be a nonsense. In short, CASA will assess otherwise identical applicants (age, sex etc) as having different cardio-vascular risks on the basis of ethnicity alone. Therefore, the outcome must be that some applicants will, for example, be required to undergo tests that otherwise identical applicants would not be required to undergo, because of the applicant’s ethnicity.

My amateur research of Australian aviation accident and incident data does not indicate that pilots of particular ethnicities had a higher rate of accidents or incidents due to undetected cardio-vascular disease in the many decades before the ethnicity question was added to AvMed’s questionnaire. My amateur research of studies of cardio-vascular disease risk indicate that there are no biological differences between different ethnicities which cause different cardiovascular disease risk. There’s a correlation, because in many societies ethnic minorities end up in deprived socio-economic circumstances – unemployed, bad diet, substance abuse, inadequate or no medical care – which circumstances are the actual cause of cardiac disease. I’ll leave all that to the Australian Human Rights Commission to consider.

Meanwhile, my FOI request for access to documents recording how the different answers to the ethnicity question affect CASA’s assessment of applicants’ cardio-vascular disease risk returned no documents. Presumably the MRS was changed on ‘a nod and wink’, just like there’s no record of the decision - or of the implementation of the decision - to delete the offensive material from the appalling and now disappeared AvMed Form 420 about ASD and ADHD.

And just like there’s no record that CASA can find of the CAD ever having been determined as a ‘third tier’ colour vision test by someone with the power to do that, despite the CAD being used to destroy careers and career aspirations for years. The CAD has now been disappeared as a purported ‘third tier’ test, with no replacement, which means CASA is now preventing applicants with colour vision deficiency from complying with the CASRs which prescribe the means by which compliance with the colour vision criterion in the medical standard must be demonstrated. Read that twice: CASA is now preventing people from complying with CASR, by not doing its one job on CVD, which is to determine one or more tests that simulate an operational situation for the purposes of CASRs 67.150(6)(c) and 67.155(6)(c).

CASA’s response to my FOI request also revealed that the decision to add the ethnicity question was not made by any individual but was instead the “consensus” of senior medical officers at their annual group hug. There’s a novel approach to regulatory decision-making: Have a vote.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. But it’s what happens when regulatory authorities are left to their own devices for decades.

What if you identify as Chinese, and female even if your ethnicty is actually Inuit and you were born a biological male and have had no hormone treatment nor surgery?
Can the DAME override your choice of ethnicity and gender?
So many ethical and moral questions to ponder.
Not sure if I can cope.
Mick

You'd have to ask CASA, but don't expect an answer.

In the wake of the addition of the ethnicity question, I wrote to CASA and asked: The AvMed questionnaire is, after all, supposed to be about safety risk assessment, isn't it?

Unsurprisingly, silence continues to be the stern reply.

And for the record, my view is that those questions, and the ethnicity question, are offensive, unnecessary and probably unlawful if - as seems to be the inevitable consequence of the different answers to the ethnicity question - otherwise identical applicants are assessed as having different cardio-vascular disease risks and subjected to different testing requirements/certificate conditions/refusal to certify because of the applicants' different answers to the question.

So what are you going to say when it doesn't fail?? Besides the fact that CASA would NEVER give the industry something for nothing and wait for it to fail so they could take it back.

​​​​​​​You need to loosen the grip a little mate.

Meanwhile overseas. UK PMD allows you to self certify in aircraft up to 5700kg (additional restrictions for above 2000kg) and carry up to 3 passengers (4 on board). USA BasicMed allows self certification up to 2700kg and 5 passengers (6 on board). And we argue about the pittance that CASA/AvMed throw at us as possibly being to loose? Again another example of Aussies making life hard for themselves, when places like the USA with an aviation industry size and density so far higher than us it's just pathetic how tight our laws are.

There's another insidious thing or seven in CASA medicals Clint, more "do not pass go, do not collect $200":

Applicant's declarations: I authorise:
1. CASA to seek medical information in relation to me from any medical practitioner who has treated me, from medicare health records, and so on.
There is no option to proceed with your application without agreeing to this. Is that some sort of blackmail or coercion?
And what happened to Doctor-patient confidentiality?
I'm sure if any doctor was asked by CASA "giz a look at their file" would say - "you know what, how does NO sound?"
I'm sure the Dr would ask your consent to hand it over first, to which you'd say "you know what, how does NO sound?"
What happens then? Or if the doctor says sure CASA, but let me prepare an estimate for you, or, MY costs will be $300 an hour to do this for you, (seek patient permission) with a minimum 4 hours payable. Cash or Card?

And the next one:
All information provided by me in this application is true and correct and that I have read and understood the Guidelines – Medical Assessment for Aviation and the operational limitations.
These guidelines are 142 pages long and the only ethnicity mention (but not by that word) is the acknowledgement of country.
I very much doubt declaring your "ethnicity" is a criteria within CASR Part 67. Just like declaring your height and weight isn't in there either (last time I looked).