A slap on the wrist

Michael Solondz was denied a medical special issuance for being on a specific medication, and he took it to the Court of Appeals. The medication was ruled disqualifying by the FAA without any individual evaluation being considered. This kind of arbitrary decision-making is not unique. The FAA imposed a five-year waiting period for bleeding in the brain regardless of all the other specific circumstances. In Solondz’s situation, the FAA also kept coming up with other issues from his distant past medical history, which became a roulette of excuses where the court found “the agency’s previous denial letters displayed shifting justifications that were, in some instances, illogical”—a denial technique the FAA has employed for years.

The court also stated, “We conclude that the Final Denial Letter was arbitrary and capricious because the FAA has not adequately articulated a rationale for its policy categorically barring pilots under treatment with mirtazapine (Remeron) from Special Issuance medical certification.” The court was “unclear how the FAA resolved apparent contradictions between the medical studies on which it relied and its conclusion….”

What does this mean for pilots on special issuances and pilots who may need them in the future? That is the big question for the FAA as well as pilots. As I have mentioned in this column over the years, the FAA has used a “check box” approach to medical qualification decisions. Although AMEs are trained to evaluate pilots, they have no discretion to make decisions since almost every disease or condition requires the use of a FAA designed template that uses a yes/no decision tree. In the decision tree, if the pilot falls into a single “yes” category, the pilot must be deferred. There is no option for the AME to say “yes, but...” due to specific circumstances that would not impact the pilot’s ability to safely fly.

From an AME perspective, 99 percent of all pilots I defer to the FAA because they have a “yes” answer on the template—whom I have evaluated, and I believe are safe to fly—eventually get their medical. It may take months or years because of the backlog at the agency, but it will eventually come. Of course, the “shifting justifications” mentioned previously causes delays when the FAA asks for more information or testing. When that request happens and the desired material is returned to the FAA, the case goes to the bottom of the pile, which means a duplication of the first delay.

There are pilots who I believe are not safe to fly, and I have no hesitancy to state that to the pilot or the FAA. Some people are just not healthy enough or medically stable enough to fly.

A pilot who was applying for a special issuance left a message for me saying he wanted to make sure he had all the necessary paperwork for his application. When I reached him, he told me he had promised himself that if he ever felt he was not safe to carry passengers or might endanger someone on the ground, he would stop flying. Between the time he left the message and a few days later when I contacted him, he told me he had an event that would make him unsafe to fly and was abandoning his quest for a medical. He was satisfied with his long history as a pilot and understood safety was the priority.The medically related accident rate is so small that it is a non-number, proving pilots make safe decisions about their medical readiness to fly without input from the FAA.

This self-monitoring works and works well as demonstrated by the statistics from the FAA. When I pass an applicant for a medical, I am certifying that the pilot is safe to fly. However, that pilot certifies that he or she is safe to fly every time they get into that cockpit over the next two to five years depending on their age. The medically related accident rate is so small that it is a non-number, proving pilots make safe decisions about their medical readiness to fly without input from the FAA.

Hopefully, this significant slap on the wrist from the Court of Appeals will steer the FAA to a more reasoned approach to medical certification.

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