Final Blog - Pilot Mental Illness: Relevant Topic or Overreaction?

As I stated in my original blog posted on January 27, 2018, the FAA lifted a ban on use of some antidepressants for commercial pilots, as there’s a lack evidence that safety could improve. Mental health problems are present in aviation, just like in any other industry. The Aviation Medical Examiner (AME) assesses mental health in pilots and very little data exists. An AME asks questions about psychological conditions and the Pilots must disclose all physical/psychological conditions/medications and if they fail to adhere to, there is substantial consequences. 

What is considered mental health? It’s a wide range of mental health conditions – disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. Many people have mental health concerns, as much as 1 in 10 people in the United States rely on antidepressants that involves: depression, anxiety disorders, and schizophrenia. Mental health concerns become a mental illness when ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress and affect your ability to function. With about 140,000 active pilots flying more than 3 billion people worldwide each year, about 1 out of 8 pilots suffer from mental illness. The stigma behind mental health has a negative stereotype with anyone who has mental illness. Of course, this stigma can lead to discrimination and this is where the FAA automatically assumes that you’re incapable of doing your job. The pilots in the aviation industry are expected to put in long hours and abide by the schedule change. However, ensuring that the industry is furnished with adequate number of pilots could help ease the strain of fatigue. Airlines are familiar with the consequences of mental health, which is why they administer personality tests during the selection process in order to identify any mental health issues. One example is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. This long questionnaire can identify any at risk candidates, by asking a series of questions, worded differently, all around a similar subject. Another questionnaire measures how susceptible someone is to change. Throughout the hiring phase, pilots can be administered different personality test to see if they are at risk of mental health issues. Many pilots view the aviation medical professionals are looking for a reason to find an excuse to ground them. Some of the questions they ask regarding mental health are: do you feel like a failure, have trouble falling or staying asleep, have a poor appetite, poor concentration and do they feel as if they were better off dead. 

The FAA is conducting research into newer and more relevant data concerning mental health. It is equally important for pilots to feel open about their mental health and not be afraid of losing their career. For example, airlines are to develop a program to remove individuals who are in a high-risk state and help them transition into a more suitable job. In June 2016, the FAA ruled out requiring AME psychological tests for airline pilots claiming that they have shown to be ineffective because they reveal a pilot’s mental health for only a moment in time without providing insight into whether the pilot will suffer problems later. However, the airlines continue to require a variety of tests and random pilot testing to see if they are fit with the company. Unfortunately, assessments that would predict appropriate behavior have not yet been developed, and it may only be the emergence of the stress. Personality tests can be biased in undesirable ways. They can filter out people with a history of mental illness, but this process I prohibited as part of the hiring process under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA). There’s increasing evidence that personality tests aren’t very successful at finding good employees. Technically speaking, the psychological tests can exclude an entire population with disabilities from work and this is what the FAA and the ADA are trying to avoid. However, the legal responsibility of the FAA and the Airlines can terminate an employee whose illness would cause an undue hardship to the business, or if there’s a credible reason to think the individual could pose a threat to themselves or others. If pilots fail to disclose all existing physical and psychological conditions and medications or face significant fines of up to $250,000 if they are found to have falsified information. If a pilot were determined to hide his or her condition and wasn’t exhibiting visible signs of distress, there’d be no easy way for the lie to be discovered. Due to privacy laws, according to the ADA there is a ban over broad inquiries of medical histories to employers or prospective employers. The FAA put the two pilots in the cockpit rule on all U.S. airlines. There are two groups of pilots: If you wanna fly, you gotta lie and honesty is always the best policy. I’m with the you gotta lie to fly, you have an individual who has spent years getting their certificates to have it thrown away in a blink of an eye. It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what. 

Chalabi, Mona. (November 20, 2013). The Guardian. Antidepressants: global trends. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/nov/20/mental-health-antidepressants-global-trends.

BBC News. (March 23, 2017). Germanwings crash: What happened in the final 30 minutes. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32072218.

Epstein, Adams. (March 26, 2015). A brief history of pilots deliberately crashing planes. Retrieved from https://qz.com/370575/a-brief-history-of-pilots-deliberately-crashing-planes/.

Wikipedia. (April 2, 2018). Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory.

Blakemore, Erin. (December 16, 2016). Smithsonian. Think Your Job is Depressing? Try Being an Airline Pilot. Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/airline-pilots-are-really-depressed-180961475/.

Hayes, Chris. (April 27, 2015). Fox 2 Now St. Louis. An airline pilot discusses mental illness and protecting passengers. Retrieved from http://fox2now.com/2015/04/27/an-airline-pilot-discusses-mental-illness-and-protecting-passengers/.

ATC Privatization

A plane’s movement, from preflight checks made at the gate through landing at a destination airport is closely coordinated by a series of air traffic controllers at the origin airport, in the region, along the plane’s route and at the destination airport. Each has a specific duty in the process, and is vital to the efficiency of air travel in the United States. The topic of NextGen has been brought up when President Trump nominated his personal pilot to be a candidate in the running for the next FAA Administrator. NextGen has been a long process, which started in 2007 and finalized by 2015. The goals of NextGen would be to increase the safety, efficiency, capacity and predictability, using a satellite-based system. NextGen is not just a single program; it’s made up of a series of initiatives such as: Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), System-Wide Information Management (SWIM), Data Communication, The Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing Program, Performance-Based Navigation and Reduced Separation Standards (PBN), Trajectory-Based Operations (TBO), Low-Visibility Operations, Flight Deck Enhancements such as TIS-B, FIS-B and EFBs, NAS Voice System,Collaborative Air Traffic Management Technologies (CATMT),Common Support Service-Weather (CSS-Wx) and Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to reduce Emissions (AIRE).

They believe that air traffic control privatization is the biggest threat to the future of our industry, claiming that it’s being pushed by the nation’s biggest airlines and some front groups. The private pilots and small airports are concerned that high user fees will create an industry dominated by large airlines that can afford such costs, leaving small businesses and towns behind. General Aviation Manufactures Association and Experimental Aircraft Association have both stated that everyone should reach out to contact their representative in Congress and urge them to oppose H.R. 2997. They have also declared that our current ATC systems works and handing it to a monopoly that is governed by a nonprofit board of directors who have never managed any ATC system in their life would be that most devastating thing that could have ever happened in the aviation industry. 

Nav Canada, a nonprofit company that owns and runs Canada’s civil air navigation system, as well as the UK, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland have joined realized that the government managing air traffic was a big mistake. They are the model for those in the U.S. airline industry and Congress who want to shift responsibility for air traffic control out of the FAA. They believed that private companies could do a better job of investing in new technology, improving efficiency and reliability and lowering costs. Canada, for example, privatized its air traffic control back in 1996, in a way similar to what Trump is proposing to do now. The results have been a resounding success and if the U.S. converts to NextGen as Canada has, it will be light years ahead in technology and efficiency. 

In a response to a request from the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation, the FAA and the NextGen Advisory Committee, needs to develop a step-by-step plan. However, it’s been said that the FAA has missed many opportunity to more efficiently use its resources by implementing the highest-priority capabilities. Congress has continued to meet with DOT in knowing the steps needed to not delay NextGen any longer. Many have suggested that FAA’s role as a regulatory agency and its ATC function has been a fundamental mismatch in modernizing the system. 

As the aviation industry continues to grow, we will definitely need something new, better and a much faster system. It would provide pilots. And ATC with real time information, moving from radar systems to satellite technology. More airplanes would be able to fly closer together, with 500 feet of vertical separation would be the new standard instead of the 1000 feet we are allowed now. All this will lead to 20% reduction of en route errors, reduced fuel cost, more direct routes which will lead to faster flights, fewer delays and enhanced security.

Rumore, Kori and Geib, Phil. (September 29, 2014). How the air traffic control system works. Retrieved April 7, 2018 from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-how-the-air-traffic-control-system-works-graphic-20140929-htmlstory.html.

Werner, Debra. (June 2017). Privatizing Air Traffic Control. Retrieved April 7, 2018 from https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/privatizing-air-traffic-control/.