why a 3rd class medical?

[av8rps]

Oh, and on the subject of a medical:

I run a trucking company. Every commercial truck driver in America is required to have a DOT approved medical. Yet every time I start shopping for company health insurance I get told how our rates are high because we have such an unhealthy group

Having medicals proves nothing as you can keel over walking out the door of the doctors office (my grandfather died in his sleep the night after a complete physical, which he passed with flying colors).

To make the public feel better they should continue with medicals for commercial pilot licenses, just like they do with truck drivers.

But for recreational pilots there should be nothing more required than to show you have a valid drivers license, like LSA.

[PropWash]

All the stats I see put GA aircraft at the same risk level as motorcycles. With that said all the reading I do on crashes it seems that if you don’t starve your plane of fuel, attempt the impossible turn and stall it when the engine quits on takeoff your eliminated all lot of the stats.

As far as the medical it seems a lot of people lie on them anyway or avoid seeking medical treatment from fear of loosing them. As mentioned above you just don’t coast to the side of the road when something happens so probably good that there is some basic risk assessment.

Yes I have seen similar stats. Specifically, If you 1) don't run out of gas, 2)don't fly close to the ground outside of take off and landing, and 3) don't fly VMC into IMC, then GA is darn near as safe as driving a vehicle.

[Hockeystud87]

Yes I have seen similar stats. Specifically, If you 1) don't run out of gas, 2)don't fly close to the ground outside of take off and landing, and 3) don't fly VMC into IMC, then GA is darn near as safe as driving a vehicle.

This is actually very true You reduce all accidents by almost over 60% if you don't spins tall and fly into clouds.

[nyrikki]

While there may eventually be the option to just allow for basic med without the 2006 cutoff for a class 3 medical at some point in the future; remember that International law also ties into this. You cannot fly to Canada on Basic Med or with a Sport Pilot ticket as an example. We will see where the FAA goes but the 3rd class medical is probably with us in some form for a very long time.

Related to the stalls, spins and other loss of control in-flight the FAA is taking big steps to encourage angle of attack indicators in even GA aircraft which is pretty impressive on how they decided to simplify the approval in the certified world.

I don't think that the forward spar design will allow for my prefered safeflight SCx AOA indicator options like the Garmin and Bendix King do work standalone and while they add another $1500+ to the cost and add weight they seem like a great idea to me.

While not perfect it should help during a loss of power during take off or other situations where an accelerated stall or a stretched glide happens during stress. I suppose it has somewhat less than a 50% chance of helping alert to a cross-control stall too.

AOA indicators are not a replacement for spin and other training but if you are looking to help mitigate risk consider it.

Edited to add:

This FAA Video will show how some of the options work. While just an opinion I think the typical pitot tube location may lead to some false positives for AOA but maybe moving it out one more rib on the wing or a bit forward may help. This is just a guess and I don't have data to show that it may be shadowed so just consider it yourself. I like the safeflight being on the leading edge which I think would solve this issue but doesn't seem possible without causing more serious issues as it would require cutting the forward spar.