obvious mental problems<\/a> managed to slip through the system.<\/p>\nBut is it surprising?\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00a0 I bet there are a lot of pilots with medical or mental problems that would get them grounded if the military or FAA knew about them.\u00a0 Certainly any airline pilot foolish enough to tell an FAA physician about mental issues would be immediately grounded.<\/p>\n
The Jet Blue pilot who flipped out on Tuesday’s flight from New York City to Las Vegas had, I’ll wager, been getting treatment and medications offline, outside the FAA’s knowledge.\u00a0 If he had been taking psychotropic drugs, it’s very likely he had stopped taking them days or even weeks before his breakdown.\u00a0 He probably felt fine, didn’t like the side effects of the medication, and thought himself cured.\u00a0 That he had never before experienced an episode in flight, around co-workers, or in front of an FAA physician was probably because in the past he had<\/em> been maintaining with meds.<\/p>\nIt does make me wonder how many other pilots like this are out there. ‘Cause you know if there’s one, there’s more.\u00a0 And if this guy found a way to keep his mental illness from the FAA, others have found ways too.<\/p>\n
I have to say, after reading about the pilot’s erratic actions and behavior when he was at the controls, I’m amazed the co-pilot succeeded in talking him into leaving the cockpit … if I ran Jet Blue, I’d put that co-pilot in the left seat right away.\u00a0 Bravo zulu, sir!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m working on the motorcycle today, so this’ll be a short entry. As an Air Force pilot I had to pass a complete flight physical every year.\u00a0 Under civilian rules, airline transport pilots are inspected even more often: two physicals per year, administered by FAA-certified doctors.\u00a0 So it’s unsettling that a pilot with obvious mental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[705,702,704,703],"class_list":["post-9595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-flying","tag-faa-physicals","tag-jet-blue","tag-medications","tag-mental-illness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9595"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9607,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9595\/revisions\/9607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/jet-blue.jpg\" "\\"jet")
I’m working on the motorcycle today, so this’ll be a short entry.<\/p>\n