Flight Planning
Fraud investigation leads to changes on medical application
You’ve already heard about changes to the way the FAA asks aviation medical applicants about their driving records, but new medical application forms arriving at your AME’s office also feature new questions and terms.
A new question, 18y, asks pilots if they receive medical disability benefits—a change that arose out of a congressional investigation into Social Security fraud. Answering “yes” doesn’t necessarily indicate a disqualifying medical condition, but the medical condition that results in disability payments should be reported on the application. That information can be shared with other federal agencies thanks to an accompanying change in the Privacy Act Statement for the medical application.
A new section in that statement specifies that information on the medical application can be disclosed to other federal agencies for verification of the accuracy or completeness of the information.
Other changes to the form have little real impact on pilots, but were made for clarification as part of the overhaul of the document. For example, the word “urinalysis” has been replaced with “urine test” to more accurately describe the type of tests performed by medical examiners.
AOPA’s interactive medical application planning tool, TurboMedical®, has been updated to reflect the changes to the medical application form. To learn more about the changes to the medical application forms and how they may affect you, talk to the medical certification experts in AOPA’s Pilot Information Center at 800/ USA-AOPA.
November 17, 2008
