FAA Enhances MedXPress Medical Application Guidance

The FAA recently updated the MedXPress application portal to add more instructions for users. These changes are part of the FAA and industry’s ongoing education efforts to ensure that applicants are better prepared at the time of their exam with an FAA aviation medical examiner (AME), and additional improvements are planned.

MedXPress now includes prominent up-front instructions for applicants to look up their conditions in the Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners (AME Guide), which contains application criteria and time-of-exam dispositions for most medical diagnoses. The FAA has also developed a new how-to pamphlet aimed at providing pilots with guidance on using the AME Guide, which has historically been a technical document written for medical professionals.

Following industry input, the guide has become gradually more user-friendly for the public over the past several years.

The FAA has signaled its desire for additional improvements and EAA is currently participating in a working group mandated by Congress that is considering additional changes to the medical application process that go well beyond MedXPress. Along with other industry/FAA efforts, EAA seeks to modernize both the medical application and the standards by which applicants are evaluated.

Earlier this year, EAA joined a broad coalition of industry associations in publishing a checklist for the FAA medical application. The guidance stresses completing as much “homework” as possible prior to the AME exam, and the new FAA literature on using the AME Guide further reinforces and explains this point.

Numerous forums at this year’s AirVenture will focus on helping pilots prepare for their FAA medical examination.