Aeromedical

Chief among the many comments and reactions to the suicide by Rich Russell in a Horizon Airlines Q400 on Friday was the wonder about how a ramp attendant could take off and do aerobatics in a regional airliner. Well, Russell may have provided the answer himself. He told air traffic controllers he played video games […]

A Horizon Air Q400 crashed on Ketron Island near Seattle-Tacoma Airport in Washington State after 29-year-old ramp worker Rich Russell was able to take it off from the busy international airport. The motive was suicide and it was not a terrorist act. Russell used a tug to turn around the aircraft, which was waiting for […]

Flying is often a convenient and valuable means of travel. But it can also be lethal if we fail to abide some simple guidelines designed to keep us safe. Many of these rules, procedures, and limits were explained to us by our instructors, and then followed up by a request that we make a vow […]

The BasicMed checklist we’ve been reviewing in the Healthy Pilot series ticks the usual boxes—dizziness, sensitive gut, cancer, kidney stones and more. They’re all there, even depression and mental acuity. But the central player in your personal health history is your heart. It unfailingly pumps oxygenated blood out to the extremities, distributes nutrients to the […]

At least 33 passengers on a Ryanair flight to Croatia were treated in hospitals for bleeding ears, mouths and noses when the packed Boeing 737-800 was put into an emergency descent for a pressurization problem. The aircraft was carrying 189 passengers when it dove for breathable air early in the flight from Dublin to Zadar. […]

Air China will take a “zero tolerance” approach to its investigation of a first officer’s apparently bungled attempt to sneak an in-flight vape aboard one of its Boeing 737s last Tuesday. The FO is reported to have meant to shut off the air recycling system aboard the aircraft while it was at cruise to cover […]

New research from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggests that flight attendants are at a higher risk than the general public for several forms cancer. To gather data, the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study surveyed U.S.-based flight attendants and compared the results to non-flying groups of similar ages and genders. The study […]

Healthy Pilot has been covering the BasicMed checklist in the past few installments, but we will be departing from that protocol in coming issues to cover health problems that impact the population in general and pilots in particular. Sleep disorders are up first, a condition that seems ubiquitous. For pilots, fatigue caused by sleep problems […]

It’s only within the last 20 years that scientists have identified depression as the precursor to a host of physical ailments—from heart disease to sensitive gut. Whether depression is the cause or depression is the consequence, there is no doubt that feeling low impacts health in negative ways. For BasicMed, the FAA bundles depression, anxiety, […]

The FAA has issued a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) that will allow pilots to fly two larger Piper aircraft under BasicMed medical certificates. Under BasicMed, pilots are restricted to aircraft certified to carry six or fewer people. Senecas and most Cherokee Six aircraft and their derivatives are certified as seven-seat aircraft although few actually have […]