Preflight Your Medical

Medical certification – it’s the cause of too much stress for too many pilots, from confusion about standards and medications to long wait times and repeated requests for information. EAA is working hard on making the process better for everyone by making sure that standards are reasonable and simple and that the FAA has adequate resources to handle cases quickly.

EAA will continue to work with the rest of the industry on this important issue. Equally impactful, however, are the factors that you can control as the applicant to ensure a smooth certification process. Doing your “homework” ahead of time can reduce the review time and requests for information that delay certification.

Think of it as a preflight checklist for medical certification. A thorough preflight won’t prevent every problem that might arise while you are flying, but it will reduce the number of potential surprises.

Preflighting your medical starts with two key pieces of data: your medical history and the medications that you are currently taking. Medical history really means your entire medical history. The FAA medical application literally asks, “Have you ever in your life been diagnosed with, had, or do you presently have any of the following?” What follows is a comprehensive list of medical conditions, ending with the catch-all “other illness, disability, or surgery.”

Checking “yes” on any of these conditions is certainly not a dealbreaker. In fact, for most benign issues a simple written explanation will suffice. The most common cause of medical woes, in our experience, is when an applicant does not realize that a condition will require a more extensive workup, or they wait until the visit with an aviation medical examiner (AME) to ask about it. By then it may be too late to avoid a long and costly certification process. As soon as you become aware of a new medical problem or condition, any time during the year, talk to your AME or a pilot advocacy group like EAA (800-654-6322 or govt@eaa.org). It can take weeks, even months, to gather all the information the FAA will require, and if that is all ready to send to the FAA when your exam is done, you will have a much greater chance of an immediate and smooth approval.

The FAA has simplified many of their certification protocols recently, and most are available to the public in the FAA’s Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners. These disease protocols offer a good overview of the information the FAA will require for a decision, and of the complexity of the review process.

It is also possible to find information on most diagnoses by searching online for “FAA [name of diagnosis].” When using this method, ensure that you are receiving information from an FAA URL, as some information online from other sources may be anecdotal or out of date.

The FAA publishes a “Do Not Fly/Do Not Issue” list for medications that are either prohibited or require further review for issuance. Again, this information is not fully comprehensive but does include most common problematic medications.

Any good preflight needs a good checklist, and EAA has partnered with other aviation industry associations to produce one for your medical. Visit EAA.org/MedicalChecklist for more information.

We can help with your medical questions this week! Our medical experts will be available in the EAA Member Welcome Center from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Thursday. The FAA is also available to answer medical questions in the FAA Safety Center.