AircraftOwner Online

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute in Oklahoma City offers a dynamic  course to help pilots understand physiological and psychological stresses of flight. The one day course is a must for anyone who flies higher than 10,000 feet but is valuable for all pilots.

    The course covers the common physiologic problems of flight as well as some of the uncommon ones like decompression sickness. Probably the most important part of the course is the experience in the altitude (hypobaric) chamber which cannot be easily duplicated in an aircraft.

    Pilots understand that training and recurrent training is important. Understanding physiologic issues is difficult without experiencing them and then periodically, revisiting the subject for new developments and reminders about how serious these problems may be.

    Spatial disorientation is one area that many pilots last felt on a spinning ride at a playground many years in the past. Adults tend to think that it takes that kind of force and velocity to create spatial disorientation because they have not felt the sensation in an aircraft.

    The FAA demonstrates that the initiators of do not require major forces using equipment like a Barany chair, a Vertigon, a GYRO, or a Virtual Reality Spatial Disorientation Demonstrator. This is the type of training that might have saved the life of John Kennedy Jr. and many other pilots­both high and low time.

    The use and abuse of oxygen and oxygen equipment is covered in the course as well as how to use a pulse oximeter. Understanding why the FAA recommends oxygen as low as 5,000 feet at night is covered as well as high altitude hypoxia in the chamber.

    The chamber experience is certainly dramatic. Pilots are taken to as high as 25,000 feet in the chamber and asked to remove their oxygen. They are then asked to do some simple math problems or other simple tasks. Watching the video of pilots going really stupid is entertaining and educational. The video is used to show this behavior because the hypoxic victim cannot recall how dumb they were.

    Rapid decompression from 8,000 to 18,000 feet is another demonstration that cannot be duplicated in an aircraft. Just knowing what that feels like and knowing what to expect is a real eye opener.

    Every pilot should go through a personal physiologic and psychological check list prior to each flight. The FAA uses the acronym “I M SAFE”. The acronym stands for Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, and Emotion. Let’s go through this simple check list.

    Illness may seem straight forward but there are many pilots who took off with their stuffy noise from the spring hay fever season who suffered incapacitation pain when they could not clear their ears on decent. The stuffy nose did not appear to be important on the ground but aviation presents many unique factors to illness.

    Medications can definitely be a problem. No pilot should fly when starting new medications since every drug can cause side effects regardless of the labeling. Of particular concern are psychoactive medications. A psychoactive medication ranges from psychological drugs like anti anxiety agents to simple antihistamines over the counter. Any drug that can affect the brain, whether it is sedating or alerting, can pose problems in the cockpit. Altitude may also increase side effects of medications.

    Stress can have significant impact flight safety. Regional airline pilots has claimed, rightly so, that they jobs are harder than the big iron pilots due to all the takeoffs and landings in a day at uncontrolled airports with marginal weather reporting equipment. This is the kind of stress that leads to mistakes­most not so serious but some are tragically fatal. This same kind of stress can affect general aviation pilots. Getting up early for business trips with returns late on the same day is a classic example of stress for a GA pilot.

    Alcohol is generally an obvious problem for piloting an aircraft. What also has to be considered is the effect of residual alcohol from the night before and/or a hangover on pilot performance. Also, a hangover will increase the risk of motion sickness, spatial disorientation, and cognitive mistakes.

    Fatigue goes hand in hand with stress. It can be a real problem on long flights as well as cause real impairment as the work load increases.

    Emotion is a factor that frequently gets overlooked. Going out and doing touch and goes may not be the best way to shake off the anger generated by your teenage kids. The effect of emotions on the thought process and the ability to perform complex task is significant.

            More information on the CAMI course can be found at http://www.faa.gov/pilots/training/airman_education/aerospace_physiology/index.cfm. Courses are also given as several military facilities around the country.

    Most commonly, this issue came up in regard to the airman’s answers to Question 18v on the Application to Renew Medical Certificate. The FAA basically felt that it was totally incredible to believe that someone who had been stopped by the police for a supposed alcohol-related charge, and who answered “no” to the question, didn’t intend to deceive the FAA. In the collective mind of the FAA, pilots should know that they need to err on the side of full disclosure of all alcohol-related stops.

    Question 18w also came in for review. The question asks about convictions for crimes other than non-alcohol-related traffic crimes. One pilot, who had a criminal conviction for forgery, testified that he had discussed this question with his AME. Both he and his AME told the Administrative Law Judge that the AME had advised the pilot that the only thing the FAA was interested in on this form was a conviction for alcohol or drug-related matters. The NTSB felt that this information was irrelevant because the pilot also testified that he now understands that this information was incorrect and that he should have answered the question “yes”. The DC Circuit Court ruled that the NTSB had to consider the pilot’s arguments and testimony, and could not simply ignore it.

    As many of you are aware, the FAA has been using its “emergency” powers more and more recently lately. In fact, as of last year, fully 46% of all of the appeals heard by the NTSB from decisions made by Administrative Law Judges were from emergency appeals. This means that more than half of all FAA enforcement actions are now classified as “emergency” actions, forcing the airman to send back his or her certificates, stop flying immediately, hire counsel and prepare to go to trial within 30 days. To make matters worse, the FAA had convinced the NTSB that it did not have to prove “intent” to falsify an entry when trying to prove that an airman was guilty of the offense of “intentional falsification”, resulting in the airman being deprive of a hearing if the FAA could simply prove that the information on the forms submitted by the airman was false. This combination of having to defend under the expedited procedures of the emergency determination by the Administrator, and not even being able to show any circumstances under which an improper or incorrect statement might not have been intended by the airman to deceive the FAA, has resulted in a huge number of airmen losing their flying privileges for things that, in years gone by, would never have resulted in such a severe penalty.

    While these two new cases are important, they still give a lot of latitude to the NTSB and the Administrative Law Judges to rehear the cases involved and still to make rulings in favor of the FAA and against the airman. The primary benefit of these cases, however, is that this is one more reminder, from a very high judicial authority, that the FAA really has an obligation to prove that the airman did something wrong and that the appropriate punishment for what the airman did wrong is revocation of the airman’s certificates.

    We can only hope that, at some time in the near future, both the Courts and the Congress will take a look at the way in which the FAA has used its determination that an “emergency” exists. Only the most radical of pilots or lawyers would argue that the FAA should not have the power to enact regulations and to make sure that airmen follow those regulations. In most cases, however, where the FAA believes that a violation exists, I think most informed people would agree that the airman is entitled to an opportunity to present his or her side of the story, and to have his or her arguments listened to by a neutral party. Sane people would also not differ on the fact that the government needs to have the power to stop an activity that imminently threatens the lives of the traveling public, or of people on the ground, without having to wade through a whole bunch of red tape to stop the dangerous activity.

    But many of us in the field have noticed that many, if not most, of the actions the FAA is bringing under its emergency power do not appear to have any imminent threat to the safety of flight. They are, for want of a better adjective, “garden variety” technical regulatory paperwork violations. In some cases, the FAA has researched and investigated the operations for years, and there have been no accidents, or even history of safety violations, when the FAA suddenly files an Emergency Order of Revocation, essentially grounding the operator immediately. In the cases of small operators, this immediate cessation of business usually spells the end of the business in its entirety. The operator simply lacks the cash reserves to keep paying rent, salaries, and other expenses for several months, while at the same time hemorrhaging cash to pay for attorneys and expert witnesses. In effect, even if the operator or the airman prevails in the end, the business has been ruined.

            There is an urgent need to scale back the types of actions for which the FAA can bring an emergency revocation to limit the cases in which they use this drastic power to situations where air safety is truly at issue. These DC Court of Appeals cases, merely hint at a part of the solution. Much more action is needed to solve the underlying problem.