The Revised Words In PBOR2 Regarding The Wavering Of The Third Class Medical Lead To Special Issuance Questions

Last week in our AeroSports Update, we addressed the history of attempts to ease the requirement for a third class medical. The words in the Pilots Bill of Rights-2 (PBOR2) regarding the third class medical have been revised and both EAA and AOPA say this may be the only way to get third class medical relief. However, the issue remains that a special issuance medical may still be required in some cases.

The FAA has identified certain groups of medical issues that will still require obtaining a special issuance medical certificate. Overall the concept being put forth in PBOR2 is a big step forward, but virtually everyone in the aviation community agrees that reforming the oftentimes burdensome, expensive, and time-consuming special issuance medical process is a major need.

EAA put out a report saying that last week Sean Elliott, EAA’s Vice President of Advocacy and Safety, was joined by EAA's Aeromedical Council members Dr. Jack Hastings and Dr. Stephen Leonard at the formational meeting of a Civil Aviation Medical Association (CAMA)-led aeromedical coalition for the purpose of achieving significant reform to the current FAA special issuance process.

The meeting took place at the opening of the annual CAMA Scientific Meeting for its membership in Fort Worth, Texas. Also in attendance were several of the professional pilot associations/unions, a representative from Transport Canada, AOPA, and the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA).

According to EAA, the current FAA special issuance process is badly bottlenecked and routinely experiences excessive delays in returning airmen to flight status on even the simplest of treatable conditions.  The aviation medical community recognizes the harm this is causing and thus the formation of this new coalition being led by CAMA.

The stated goal of this new coalition is to identify process improvements to the bottlenecked special issuance process and move more of the simplistic treatable disqualifying conditions to the Conditions AME’s can Issue list (often referred to as the CACI list) and thus impact the expediency to the current process.

Remember, under the proposed third class medical requirements in PBOR2, once a special  issuance medical has been obtained, continued operation with a special issuance medical becomes much more manageable than it is now.

FMI: www.civilavmed.com/