philiplane
A&P, IA, CFI, CFII, MEI,
It's hard to believe that a third class medical is such a hardship.
First, you only need the ability to fog a mirror, hear a fart from across the room, see well enough not to walk into the door, and most importantly, have between $60-90 in disposable income every two years. The barriers are not high at all.
Personally, I don't want to be flying in the same space with hypertensive potential heart attack cases, or uncontrolled diabetics, or any of the other conditions that drivers can live with, but pilots should not live with.
I know many former pilots who cannot pass a third class, and should not be flying. If they got into the air it would be a matter of time before something happened.
Of course, healthy people can have problems too. There's no crystal ball that can foretell your health the moment you leave the doctor's office. But you know that most men don't see a doctor unless they're at death's door, so eliminating the 3rd class will allow hundreds of unfit pilots back into the skies in one big experiment.
Let's be honest. We want to get rid of the third class medical precisely because it will allow number of pilots who do have the money, but probably shouldn't be flying, to go flying again. They will bring money into an otherwise rapidly shrinking industry. Plain and simple.
First, you only need the ability to fog a mirror, hear a fart from across the room, see well enough not to walk into the door, and most importantly, have between $60-90 in disposable income every two years. The barriers are not high at all.
Personally, I don't want to be flying in the same space with hypertensive potential heart attack cases, or uncontrolled diabetics, or any of the other conditions that drivers can live with, but pilots should not live with.
I know many former pilots who cannot pass a third class, and should not be flying. If they got into the air it would be a matter of time before something happened.
Of course, healthy people can have problems too. There's no crystal ball that can foretell your health the moment you leave the doctor's office. But you know that most men don't see a doctor unless they're at death's door, so eliminating the 3rd class will allow hundreds of unfit pilots back into the skies in one big experiment.
Let's be honest. We want to get rid of the third class medical precisely because it will allow number of pilots who do have the money, but probably shouldn't be flying, to go flying again. They will bring money into an otherwise rapidly shrinking industry. Plain and simple.
