Basicmed findings

Rockymountain said:
I don’t think anybody’s looking at the data, and I don’t think the data exists in the subgroup analysis of sport pilots versus other pilots, medical versus no medical. The often cited basic med study was a very small study, that was performed early after basic med implementation. Most of those pilots were recently transitioned from an active medical to basic med.

The absence of data powered to see a difference in a group doesn’t rule out there being a difference between groups. Until somebody does another larger study over a longer period of time. We don’t really have an answer on whether basic MED is posting the same results as AME medicals. Even if you wanted to do a study, it would be almost impossible because you can’t obtain the denominator of hours flown accurately enough to be useful.
Click to expand...
There will be another BasicMed report to Congress coming along, presumably sometime around 2028. This was included as part of the 2024 Reauthorization. You are absolutely correct, it’s difficult to determine the denominator of BasicMed pilots. Also, it’s difficult to assess what is medical related, versus simply age related considering the older pilot population is much more likely to go BasicMed.
 
Lindberg said:
That's right. There are many pilots on basic mad who could be flying on an FAA medical. I am one. I had an FAA medical, got on basic mad, and let my medical expire. But there's no reason to believe that I would not immediately get a medical if I applied for one. No one would expect basic, mad, or sport pilot for that matter, to increase the rate of incidents among pilots who qualify for an FAA medical. The more interesting question to me, is what is the rate of incidents among pilots who do not qualify for an FAA medical, but nevertheless can fly using basic med or sport
Click to expand...
in theory, there shouldn’t be very many people who can fly BasicMed but couldn’t qualify for a medical certificate due to their medical condition. It might be costly and time consuming, and might require a change in treatment plan, but very few should be “uncertificatable” when it comes to the alternative of chasing down a special issuance.
 
Brad Z said:
in theory, there shouldn’t be very many people who can fly BasicMed but couldn’t qualify for a medical certificate due to their medical condition. It might be costly and time consuming, and might require a change in treatment plan, but very few should be “uncertificatable” when it comes to the alternative of chasing down a special issuance.
Click to expand...

I think that's likely true, and in addition I think that most pilots are reasonably intelligent people who have a strong inclination to self-preservation and will ground themselves whenever a medical condition could impose too great a risk. Yes, there are outliers and they get a lot of press, but really they're a very small minority.
 
What we know is there are more GA pilots than ever flying and the safety trend is positive:

1770501201862.png

According to FAA’s U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics, ~ 626k total GA pilots in 2000, 628K in 2010, 692K in 2020 and ~ 849K in 2023. Sport pilot represented ~ 1% in 2020, last time it was published by FAA and there are presently ~ 80K+ basic medical pilots today, or ~ 10% of total GA pilots.

In that same timeframe, there were 1,837 accidents in 2000 and 1,097 accidents in 2023. THUS pilot population has increased by 36%, going from all medically certificated in 2000 to a mix of medically certificated, sport pilot and basic med, with about 11% being not medically certified today, yet accidents have decreased by 40% in that same timeframe.

You can draw your own conclusions.
 
Palmpilot said:
Personally, I appreciate it when people probe for holes in my reasoning, because it provides me with opportunities to consider whether there is something that I have failed to consider.
Click to expand...

I don't believe any reasonable person cares when someone has a well thought out and clearly presented point to make that might challenge them to reconsider their conclusions. But there are some folks (no one in particular - but they know who they are) that like to probe a bit too much in the wrong part of the anatomy in order to try and force someone else to accept their ill mannered logic.

I'm still working on just walking away, letting it go, and "letting the blind lead the blind" (with a scarce use of the ignore tool) ...
 
UTLonghorn_1979 said:
What we know is there are more GA pilots than ever flying and the safety trend is positive:

View attachment 149701

According to FAA’s U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics, ~ 626k total GA pilots in 2000, 628K in 2010, 692K in 2020 and ~ 849K in 2023. Sport pilot represented ~ 1% in 2020, last time it was published by FAA and there are presently ~ 80K+ basic medical pilots today, or ~ 10% of total GA pilots.

In that same timeframe, there were 1,837 accidents in 2000 and 1,097 accidents in 2023. THUS pilot population has increased by 36%, going from all medically certificated in 2000 to a mix of medically certificated, sport pilot and basic med, with about 11% being not medically certified today, yet accidents have decreased by 40% in that same timeframe.

You can draw your own conclusions.
Click to expand...
Got the estimated of number of flight hours? What's the denominator?
Not taking a position here, but posting the numerator without a estimated denominator is defective thinking or laziness....one or the other.
dp243b said:
I'd like to add something to this thread... if you go to an AME and get deferred, I think the FAA needs to pay for those extra services. The extra evaluations needed by specialists.
Click to expand...
That's a "If it were all to me it'd be free".
 
Last edited:
bbchien said:
Got the estimated of number of flight hours? What's the denominator?
Not taking a position here, but posting the numerator without a estimated denominator is defective thinking or laziness....one or the other.

That's a "If it were all to me it'd be free".
Click to expand...
Fair point. 29.1M GA hours in 2000 vs 28.6M in 2023, 1.7% decrease. Yet 40% decrease in accidents during same time period. So, what now?
 
Lindberg said:
Or Jean, I would expect that someone who sells aviation insurance would know that the vast majority of GA hours are flown by pilots who don't qualify for basic med or sport. Those numbers are far from equivalent.
Click to expand...
I don’t sell Aviation Insurance, never said I did
 
UTLonghorn_1979 said:
I don’t sell Aviation Insurance, never said I did
Click to expand...
You certainly professed expertise in this thread.

U

Post in thread 'AME's and BasicMed'

Chip Sylverne said:
A good friend of mine just turned 80. In addition to getting a " Master Pilot" award from the FAA, he got a letter from AVEMCO stating at renewal he will have to get a class 3 annually, as well as an annual flight review if he wants to continue flying his Comanche. If he went to a 172 or Cherokee, he could continue on Basic Med and BFR's. Oh, and the premium is nightmare material.
Click to expand...
I don't do personal aircraft coverage, but I'm finding Avemco to not be very competitive vs. groups like Starr, HDI Specialty, Acceleration or AIG.
 
Lindberg said:
You certainly professed expertise in this thread.

U

Post in thread 'AME's and BasicMed'

Chip Sylverne said:
A good friend of mine just turned 80. In addition to getting a " Master Pilot" award from the FAA, he got a letter from AVEMCO stating at renewal he will have to get a class 3 annually, as well as an annual flight review if he wants to continue flying his Comanche. If he went to a 172 or Cherokee, he could continue on Basic Med and BFR's. Oh, and the premium is nightmare material.
Click to expand...
I don't do personal aircraft coverage, but I'm finding Avemco to not be very competitive vs. groups like Starr, HDI Specialty, Acceleration or AIG.
Click to expand...
What’s not clear about the first sentence?

“I don't do personal aircraft coverage…”

Anyways, I’ll let you two mean girl lunch table ladies take it from here. I’m off to enjoy my pilot privileges.
 
Lindberg said:
It's relevant because smaller sample sizes produce less statistically significant results. Especially when dealing with very infrequent events. This is just a comment on statistics, not the efficacy of sport pilot.
Click to expand...
And it’s statistically difficult to determine the number per hours flown per year by sports pilots and to differentiate between private pilots exercising sport privileges without a basic medical or medical cert.
 
Dr. Chien's point about secondary diagnoses is the key one that doesn't get enough attention in these discussions. The FAA's expanded cognitive testing in psychiatric SI cases isn't arbitrary — conditions like depression, ADHD, anxiety, and early cognitive decline frequently overlap, and standard psychiatric screening doesn't separate them cleanly. The cognitive battery is doing a different job than the psychiatric evaluation.
What frustrates pilots is that nobody explains this upfront. The AME sends the package, the FAA adds testing requirements with no explanation, and the applicant just sees expense and delay. A lot of the anger in this thread — and it's understandable — comes from that communication void, not necessarily the requirements themselves.
For what it's worth, the cognitive domains the FAA focuses on in these cases (processing speed, sustained attention, working memory) are also the ones most sensitive to the conditions they're screening for. It's not a random battery.
 
bbchien said:
So FAA's not gonna get caught with their pants down.
Click to expand...
Exactly. They get credit for 100% of the accidents they prevent by making it harder to fly. They get no blame for the damage done to economy, lifestyle and wellbeing for the orders of magnitude of perfectly ordinary operations they kill in the cradle.

Every applicant they keep out of the cockpit isn't 100% of a disaster averted; its 99.5% of a viable operation denied. And here we are with GenAv dying on the vine.

If Henry Ford had to deal with the Federal Automobile Administration, we'd still be driving horse-drawn buggies.
 
Half Fast said:
Because enlarging a bureaucracy is the answer?
Click to expand...
Sometimes, it is.
Look at what “bureaucracy” has brought us in the past 7 decades. Far cleaner air and water. Far safer road travel. Far safer air travel.

Is much of US bureaucracy frustrating, counterproductive, & needlessly expensive in both time and money?
Of course. But it’s not as simple as “bureaucracy bad”
 
SFDukie said:
Sometimes, it is.
Look at what “bureaucracy” has brought us in the past 7 decades. Far cleaner air and water. Far safer road travel. Far safer air travel.

Is much of US bureaucracy frustrating, counterproductive, & needlessly expensive in both time and money?
Of course. But it’s not as simple as “bureaucracy bad”
Click to expand...
That's stealing a base (in fact, several). Bureaucracy hasn't brought about a single one of those things; capitalism has. Bureaucracy is the difference between where we are and how much better off we could have been.
 
DJTorrente said:
That's stealing a base (in fact, several). Bureaucracy hasn't brought about a single one of those things; capitalism has. Bureaucracy is the difference between where we are and how much better off we could have been.
Click to expand...
Stole my thunder. Agreed, effective government did those aforementioned things. Bureaucracy did things like the DC sewage debacle, Flint, MI water, housing crisis, CA fires/water shortage, etc.

Bureaucracy is pretty much never a positive thing.
 
I think most who have had some time in the aviation world know the non medical mess that is FAA medical

Going back to how it was before, as in the old day you would use your real doctor for your medical, that seems miles better than the FAA who’s only made a mess of things in the medical certificate world
 
decalogue said:
I think most who have had some time in the aviation world know the non medical mess that is FAA medical

Going back to how it was before, as in the old day you would use your real doctor for your medical, that seems miles better than the FAA who’s only made a mess of things in the medical certificate world
Click to expand...
Who'd have thought that a real practicing doctor with a relationship with a patient is better equipped to evaluate an airman's fitness to fly than a paper pusher at a desk in OKC who may or may not have ever practiced medicine.

The FAA is exactly the same as the insurance company. Their job is to make it difficult, not to enable pilots.
 
Brad Z said:
If you really think “the FAA really needs to get their head out of their a**es” why not come aboard set things straight?
Click to expand...
Yeah...I've seen this episode before. New guy comes aboard. Attempts to be the change they seek. Gets fired for the smallest possible offense (something they would never fire anyone else for) because they "upset the apple cart"/threatened the status quo.
 
decalogue said:
From another aviation forum, FAA has been very anti authority


Click to expand...
They are very pro authority when it comes to their authority.

My DPE retired as a 35 year FAA inspector. He told me that back when AOPA, EAA, all the alphabet aviation collectives were trying to get a driver license medical passed, the FAA kept giving every excuse in the world to bury it. What the FAA didn't realize is that some of the members of these aviation collectives are also members of Congress.

They brought it to Congress. Congress said "This is what you're going to do. This is how you're going to do it. And you have 180 days to make it happen." At that point, they knew they could no longer bury it. But try like hell they did.
 
Yes and congress....didn't do it, did they. You still have to be vetted ONCE. You've got no idea what's in the population of potential pilots who have not passed the first vetting...I see a lot of that. And I think they got it just about right.
 
bbchien said:
That's a "If it were all to me it'd be free".
Click to expand...
You and I both know that the tests the FAA asks for are, in most cases, not medically necessary. Rather than jumping to non-expensive testing that isn't medically necessary (which is why insurance won't cover it), I feel like they could take a less invasive approach.

Perhaps requiring the airman to visit their primary care doctor for an evaluation for whatever condition the test is being ordered for, and an evaluation report from their PCP regarding said condition. If, during the evaluation, the doctor feels it medically necessary to conduct the testing, then it gets conducted. At least insurance would cover it at that point.
 
bbchien said:
Yes and congress....didn't do it, did they. You still have to be vetted ONCE. You've got no idea what's in the population of potential pilots who have not passed the first vetting...I see a lot of that. And I think they got it just about right.
Click to expand...
It's far better than what they were doing. And yes, the FAA found a way to keep in the loop by compromising for the one time vetting.
 
Jon Wilder said:
They brought it to Congress. Congress said "This is what you're going to do. This is how you're going to do it. And you have 180 days to make it happen." At that point, they knew they could no longer bury it. But try like hell they did.
Click to expand...
Please, tell me more…
 
It’s a completely legitimate axe to grind.

And it’s no longer a valid argument saying that FAA medicals or AMEs have needed medical expertise when you can now fly 172s, Cherokees and the like, and even some limited aerobatic aircraft under MOSAIC rules using just a DL.

You can’t honestly use the “but we all share the same skies and for public safety” when some of the most popular aircraft in GA operated by class 3 PPL pilots can now fly those same aircraft with zero FAA medical involvement. You can no longer say “but flying aircraft with g loads and at altitude require special doctor skills to assess medical fitness.”

I can’t wait for more data to show that this has been way overblown and the “axe grinding” is on the other side.
 
UTLonghorn_1979 said:
It’s a completely legitimate axe to grind.

And it’s no longer a valid argument saying that FAA medicals or AMEs have needed medical expertise when you can now fly 172s, Cherokees and the like, and even some limited aerobatic aircraft under MOSAIC rules using just a DL.

You can’t honestly use the “but we all share the same skies and for public safety” when some of the most popular aircraft in GA operated by class 3 PPL pilots can now fly those same aircraft with zero FAA medical involvement. You can no longer say “but flying aircraft with g loads and at altitude require special doctor skills to assess medical fitness.”

I can’t wait for more data to show that this has been way overblown and the “axe grinding” is on the other side.
Click to expand...

I’ll also add it’s much more physical to fly a PA28 vs a jet

So if post 65yr olds are doing gymnastics getting into their GA planes and not having issues with basic med/sport, the idea we need higher standards for less physical work in a easier plane doesn’t make sense.

But FAA was never in the making sense and science business
 
bbchien said:
There will always be AXE grinders…….
Click to expand...

This reminds me a lot of some of those kitchen nightmares shows were the owners of these nasty restaurants blame all the bad yelp reviews on people having it out for them, these owners thought the customers were all out to get them vs that their restaurant just sucked and normal people just had a bad experience at their crappy establishment
 
Boys it took me half a career to effect a small change at FAA (an ON SSRI evaluation pathway). Most of you don't remember that in 2023, 24 AMEs were relieved of appointment for issuing certificates ON SSRI 2003, petition in 2006, FAA resisted until 2010). If you want to know about disability just look at the Family Practice doc's waiting area. They KNOW and they GET IT. They also knew that the ones they issued were just "better functioning" on their Prozac (and that's not everybody, some are really basket cases....but they knew who was who).

And more recently, about two years to effect a second smaller, administrative change. Carp all you want but it all you do is carp, carp, carp, carp, carp, and if you do not approach Congress, sit down and and ST_U.

I've done my part. And I'm not having any heckling from the "didn't raise a finger" guy in the balcony.
complain, complain, complain, complain, complain,complain, complain, complain, complain, complain...
and do nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Did I fail to say, "and do nothing"? Did nothing?
 
Last edited:
bbchien said:
Boys it took me half a career to effect a small change at FAA (an ON SSRI evaluation pathway). Most of you don't remember that in 2023, 24 AMEs were relieved of appointment for issuing certificates ON SSRI 2003, petition in 2006, FAA resisted until 2010). If you want to know about disability just look at the Family Practice doc's waiting area. They KNOW and they GET IT. They also knew that the ones they issued were just "better functioning" on their Prozac (and that's not everybody, some are really basket cases....but they knew who was who).

And more recently, about two years to effect a second smaller, administrative change. Carp all you want but it all you do is carp, carp, carp, carp, carp, and if you do not approach Congress, sit down and and ST_U.

I've done my part. And I'm not having any heckling from the "didn't raise a finger" guy in the balcony.
complain, complain, complain, complain, complain,complain, complain, complain, complain, complain...
and do nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Did I fail to say, "and do nothing"? Did nothing?
Click to expand...

Who says people are not doing anything?

The quacks at FAA aero med already had congress put them in their sights, I’d wager that was from people telling their elected officials the FAA needs to get with the program.

Same with basic and sport

What would you have us do?
 
Back
Top