Not sure I want to fly in a plane whose pilot has mental issues, medicated or not. How many of these were from broken families, where the boys are often raised without fathers and pumped full of drugs when moms couldn’t cope? We sure didn’t have these problems when most kids grew up in solid families with fathers and mothers doing their jobs as parents.
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Yea, we also don’t want job applicants to have to tell about their criminal histories either. What business is it of ours to know if a sexual predator is running a daycare. I mean, that’s all controllable with medication, right?
If you’ve flown with any reasonable number of other pilots, or been in the pattern with any reasonable number of other aircraft, you’ve almost certainly been with someone working through some type of mental issue or another. The question you should be asking instead is, do you want to be flying with someone who is hiding a mental health issue and not seeking treatment for it, and who could reach their breaking point in the aircraft, rather than being treated for it on the ground?
These problems also most certainly existed “when most kids grew up in solid families”. The difference then is that people were misdiagnosed as having some other ailment or otherwise treated as a “hysterical” and/or sent to an asylum that was just a glorified torture home. Fortunately, medical science has advanced since those darker days.
In any case, we’re talking about pilots here with treatable mental health issues that are equivalent to a headache or broken bone, not terminal issues like schizophrenia or dementia. Would you rather fly with someone with treatable mild depression (whose treatment obviously doesn’t degrade their abilities), or someone with high blood pressure and choleterol (but still under the generous FAA limits) who may become physically incapacitated?
A standard, unfounded statement by those who exaggerate the issue for personal gain. I have been around my fellow pilots and aircraft designers from all backgrounds since the early 1970s and such instances are very rare. If anything, opening the door for pilots with past mental issues, as the FAA does today, invites the problems. And women - they have been in aviation since its earliest times, in the cockpit and elsewhere. That too is a non-issue among real pilots - airplanes are designed to be flown by man or woman, as far as I know. There is no “glass ceiling” in aviation, never has been. But not everything is fair in life, get over it and move on.
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How do you know? Have you directly asked them if they have any mental health issues? And for that matter, have you asked them if they have any physical health issues too? And would you trust their answers anyway? It just happens that the FAA offers ways to get back to medical certification after having, say, a heart attack. But if you don’t trust pilots with mental health issues who are receiving treatment, why would you trust a pilot who had a heart attack and received treatment to be medically qualified? Clearly they have a history if potentially-incapacitating health problems.
As far as “glass ceilings” go (which is off topic, but since you brought it up), look into the Mercury 13 group of would-be female astronauts. The medical professionals who tested them said in many cases they would actually make better astronauts than men, and yet they never flew in space. It certainly wasn’t due to their lack of mental aptitude either.
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Chuck Yeager too was deeply disappointed that he was not chosen as an astronaut. Plenty of women have gone into space since the initial Mercury program. Back then, candidates were required to be military test pilots, careers not open to women back then, when Democrats were in the WH, BTW. Like I stated, life is not always fair. Get over it and move on. Women though should not be in combat. They are too important in society to be put in harm’s way.
As a physician, I applaud the FAA for taking this much needed step forward. As has been pointed out, “mental illness” runs the gamut from a normal reactionary depression (death of a loved one) to paranoid schizophrenia. It is interwoven in every aspect of our society from the homeless to board rooms. I spent 20 years in the Navy and can attest to the fact that it occurs to carrier pilots and crew. To highlight its lack of priority in our society, I point out the largest national provider of mental health services - the US prison system.
Circle K opinions are just that, only one persons opinion. Based on his self declared history, his moral standards are at least 60 years old, so just a little behind the times. Enjoy your retirement.
Germany learned the hard way about the importance of awareness of a pilot’s mental health with the Germanwings Flight 9525 intentional suicide-murder crash (or lack of awareness in that case).