by
Darryl Phillips
Hey, another year is gone already. 1994 will be remembered as the year Bob Hoover was shot down by his own government. The year draconian changes in airman medical standards were proposed. The year our government made us a little more safe.
Safety, to my way of thinking, is a four-letter word. Safety has come to represent something vulgar, revolting, obscene. It hasn't always been this way. Safety used to be a good idea when it was tempered with common sense. Most of us have fond memories of teaching our children to look both ways twice before crossing the street. We taught them to use care, but we didn't teach them to never ever cross a street. This is a distinction lost on DOT Secretary Pena et al.
Following the recent airline accidents Secretary Pena has been on TV telling America that his primary job is making aviation safe. (This is the same Mr. Pena who, as mayor of Denver, engineered the DIA debacle - trading a paid-for airport that works for a debt-ridden one that doesn't.) But nevermind that, his job now is to bring safety to airplanes.
We know how to make airplanes safe. Just fill the fuselage with concrete, fill the engines with epoxy, give the propellers a thick covering of soft foam rubber. Oh yes, aviation would be safer, no doubt about that.
But we need to strike the best balance between risk and reward. We learned to balance the danger of getting run over versus the reward of what lies across the street. People make choices all the time, life would be difficult and freedom would be impossible without the ability to choose. We choose to eat because the risk of food poisoning is preferable to the risk of starvation. We drive to work knowing that the risk of an accident is preferable to the risk of staying home and getting fired. We accept the risks and we gain the rewards.
As pilots, we know that zooming rapidly through the air is an unnatural act. It is a dangerous act, but with a high risk comes great reward. To the airline passenger, the reward is time saved. But Mr. Pena would have the traveler believe that government can create reward without risk. If only the pilots were better trained, if only the commuter airlines met FAR Part 121 standards, if only the little airplanes were grounded, then there could be reward without risk. Bull hockey.
If the bureaucrats were sincerely interested in our well-being I guess I could handle it better. But they aren't. Consider the 400,000 deaths in this country each year due to tobacco. We would have to crash a fully loaded 747 every eight hours to equal the death caused by tobacco. 8 AM, 4 PM, Midnight, three crashes a day, every day, weekends included. More than a thousand funerals would be held every day for passengers and crew. Before winter was over the 747s would all be gone and we'd have to destroy four of the other wide body airliners per day. No survivors. By summertime, we would be crashing 727s and DC9s half a dozen times every day to keep up with the tobacco toll. By fall, it would be Embraers and Beech 1900s, two or three crashing every hour around the clock. Those wouldn't last long, and soon the King Airs and C-210s and every other airplane you can purchase a ride on would be gone too, along with all their passengers and crew. They would all be destroyed before the year was out.
Would the government allow airplanes to kill that many people? The answer is no. Would the government allow tobacco to kill that many people? The answer is yes, it happens every year. It continues because tobacco users have made a good case for free choice. And aviation hasn't. In other words, bureaucracy stomps on us because we let it.
It has been said that people deserve the government they get.
But perhaps the government is changing. The November election results were astounding, people are ready for major change, and the Republican Congress has promised change. The time is now, fellow aviators, this is the best chance we've ever had to take back control of the sky. It's the best chance we're going to get, perhaps the last chance. Please, let's not waste it.
What would constitute major change? Abolishing the pilot medical requirement for non-commercial operations would be change. Letting the states issue pilot licenses the way they issue driver licenses would be change. Ditto for aircraft licensing. Allowing us to install ballistic recovery parachutes on aircraft so inexperienced pilots could live thru their errors would be change. Declaring that there are enough ADs on private aircraft and prohibiting any more would be change. Transferring 80% of the FAA personnel to border crossing guard duty on the Rio Grande would be change.
What would NOT be change? The newly proposed revisions in Part 67 medical standards, all 162 pages, are not change. These recommendations represent the same slow erosion of pilot's rights we've seen for decades, that's no change. If they cancelled all our licenses on the same day we would kick and scream. So they gradually shift the requirements, eliminating only a few pilots at a time. Like a frog as the water temperature slowly rises, we sit here and peacefully wait to be boiled alive.
That doesn't mean pilots should not respond to this NPRM. Of course we should. We must, every one of us. If you haven't seen the NPRM, contact AOPA or EAA and ask for a copy. (And if they won't send you one, call me 918-775-4010.) This NPRM affects your right to fly. For most of us, the proposed revisions won't make much immediate difference. Just a little more money, and more frequent physicals as we grow older. But for some pilots, perhaps a few hundred or a few thousand, it will mean the end. We owe it to those guys and gals to fight this one.
Here are the rules for replying. First the government rules: Send three copies. The address is Federal Aviation Administration, Office of the Chief Counsel, Attention: Rules Docket (AGC-10), Docket No. 27940, 800 Independence Ave. S.W., Washington, DC 20591. Deadline for receipt of comments is February 21, 1995. Now here are Darryl's rules: If you have two things to comment on, make two replies (two envelopes, same as if you were two people). If you have fifty things to comment on, take the time to make fifty replies. They only count the first point you make, so don't try to save stamps by making a lot of arguments, no matter how valid they are. Keep each reply short, one side of one page. Half a page is better. Type it if you must, hand print it if you can. Make it look like it came from a live human being/experienced pilot, not a computer. State what you want, and why. State facts and reasons.
This is a major shake-up in the medical regulations. It has been in the works for ten years. During that time EAA, AOPA and others have petitioned for relaxation of third-class requirements. FAA has put those petitions off awaiting major overhaul, and now they are tightening the standards, not relaxing them. Shame on them. If we are going to see change, now is when we've got to kick and scream and make it happen.
My response to the NPRM will make just one point, that the state medical standards for driver's licensing should be accepted for noncommercial VFR day flight. Period. If enough pilots made the same point we would be heard. If you believe this should include night operations, or IFR, or whatever, say so.
I don't often make New Year's resolutions. But this year I resolve to write a pro-aviation letter every month to both of my Senators and my Congressman. Just three letters a month. Will you join me in this resolution? Golly, if every pilot would write three letters, it would amount to TWO MILLION letters every month arriving in Washington, carrying a message that we are out here, we are literate, caring, money-spending, voting pilots. We love aviation and we demand to be treated fairly. Isn't it worth a try?
May you have blue skies and tailwinds during 1995. Happy New Year.