Aeromedical

With cold and flu season underway, the FAA has published its annual list of acceptable and unacceptable over-the-counter (OTC) medications for pilots who want to fly through the pain. The first recommendation is for sick pilots to take their self-certification responsibilities to heart and to wait until they’re feeling better. It’s more complicated than that, […]

While the BasicMed semi-self-certification for airmen has been a boon for stateside pilots, it’s largely a domestic policy. Now, says AOPA, Mexico is set to allow pilots flying on BasicMed to visit. The Bahamas had already recognized BasicMed. “I would like to thank Director General Rodrigo Vásquez-Colmenares Guzmán of Mexico’s Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil […]

After years of petitioning the FAA to ease access to airman medicals, AOPA was successful in getting BasicMed passed in 2017, and now the association says more than 50,000 pilots have taken advantage of the program. That’s a not-insignificant percentage of the 600,000 certificated pilots in the U.S., but one that AOPA expects to grow […]

A United Airlines captain and his first officer are in jail in Scotland awaiting a court appearance Tuesday on charges they planned to fly a Boeing 757 full of passengers to Newark while impaired. The flight deck crew, aged 61 and 45, were intercepted in the airport and prevented from boarding for the scheduled 9 […]

Becoming disoriented in flight is one of the most terrifying experiences pilots can have. In extreme cases, it leads to loss of control, controlled flight into terrain or even an inflight breakup. Less extreme experiences lead to pilot deviation or, more optimally and after the afflicted pilot is safely back on the ground, the expense […]

It would appear pilot incapacitation was behind the fatal crash of a Cessna Citation in the Atlantic 300 miles east of Fort Lauderdale on May 24. The aircraft inexplicably changed course while on a delivery flight from Alton, Illinois, to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. The preliminary report from the NTSB says that as the Citation […]

As Boeing tweaked final development of the 737 MAX, it made the MCAS autotrim system more aggressive and ultimately riskier, according to a new report in The New York Times. Boeing failed to inform even its own test pilots and the FAA about the revisions. MCAS—Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System—was added to the 737 MAX to […]

India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had some unusual crew resource management advice for Air India Express after a seasoned captain dumped a Boeing 737-800 in a drainage ditch at Cochin Airport in April of 2017 despite repeated warnings from his much younger female first officer. In its report, the DGCA tribunal said the […]

Cathay Pacific and various authorities are investigating the mysterious “loss of visual acuity” experienced by two long-serving captains on separate flights in different aircraft types in January and February of this year. In the first instance, a 777 skipper with 4,000 hours in that left seat (27,500 hours total) had trouble seeing for about 30 […]

Nine aviation associations are objecting to a proposed FAA study that would perform toxicology tests on anonymous urine samples gathered during pilot medical exams, according to a letter sent to the FAA on April 3. The letter (PDF) states that the study proposal was presented to Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) team members during […]