Xyla Foxlin had her medical pulled for a common condition related to her choice of birth control. She’s fighting it.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/polls-quizzes/poll-is-pilot-discipline-too-lax
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/polls-quizzes/poll-is-pilot-discipline-too-lax
I think the regs are fine although outdated, but if there are rules, there should be visible enforcement. In other words, we should see more FAA safety inspectors, but their mission should not be as ticket-writing cops, but there to intercede with pilots and mechanics who may not be aware or have grown complacent with regs. Think of it as a roving Wings program that could catch problems before they become a factor in an accident.
The poll is misguided.
The regulations are a guide as to what behavior is expected and enforcement action is punishment for failing to live up to expectations.
Pilot discipline comes from within. As one fourth grader put it, “It’s behaving properly even when no one is there to hit you over the head.” Trying to make discipline manifest by regulation or enforcement action is a fool’s errand.
.P.S.: Disciplining a pilot is not pilot discipline, just as disciplining a child doesn’t necessarily teach them how to be disciplined.
On the Xyla Foxlin issue… Kudos to her for trying to tackle the arbitrary and inappropriate discretion allowed by the FAA in aeromedical evaluations. Oversight by an administrative agency requires discipline and some level of basic competence in the subject matter and there is troubling indication that the FAA is currently lacking both—basic competence as well as discipline—in many of the specialty fields of science that aviation encompasses.
But that alone won’t solve her problem. There is something fundamentally wrong with a medical device that initially administers such a high dose of treatment that the user is rendered impaired. Why is this allowed by the FDA? What is being done about it? If a testosterone patch created a similar overdose spike and deleterious effects for men there would he a howl of protest and a fix would be found pronto. Are the lives and careers of women of little to no concern to the FDA?
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