WP gift article expires in 14 days.
It’s a well known problem in the industry that pilots don’t disclose a lot of stuff for fear of having their life’s work taken away.
And to be honest, I don’t blame them. You have a system where one assessment of a mild condition could break your whole career. On the other hand, aviation is a very safe industry.
Somehow it’s fine for clearly mentally ill people to drive cars, own guns, serve as police, lead armies and nations. But your average pilot - who has an insane investment into their career - has to worry that if they mention that they are unhappy that their dog died, that can end their career.
The entire industry is extremely conservative regarding safety. And that’s one of the fallouts.
Remember the Germanwings pilot who crashed his plane into a mountain? Killed over 200 people. That’s a nightmare not only for the relatives of the victims, but also for everyone in the industry.
Yes, and that is how the problem manifests itself. If mild cases can’t be reported and treated without repercussions to the pilot, this culture of evading checks emerges, and serious cases get hidden, too.
Imagine if the Germanwings guy could have started a conversation that he’s having problems without immediately being grounded, maybe his condition would not have gotten this bad, or maybe when it did, he could have been rightfully grounded.
I can imagine that his colleagues also saw signs, but stayed silent because of the same problem.
I think a big part of it, at least in the states, is how inextricable the career is from the person, because of how dependent our employers make us on them for everything from basic needs to healthcare to a retirement plan. Imagine, that every time you reported a minor issue with the aircraft, you would risk not just your ability to fly ever again, but also your ability to work off the mountain of debt that you accrued learning how to fly a plane, and that if you lost your job your best case scenario would be crushing poverty for the rest of your life?
Of course you’d never say a damn thing - even if it meant a high risk of killing yourself and everyone on board the plane. When your choice is die slowly or die quickly, I know which one I’d take. So is it any surprise that people don’t speak up about it?
I have a friend that is a pilot. He said the quickest way to be out of a job and never be hired as a pilot again is to remotely admit you might have a mental health issue. And not in the “I hear voices” severity, more like “Hey my job is stressful, I’m away from home all the time while working, and I’m going through a divorce. Maybe talking to a professional will help me cope” kind of thing.
Are these actual “major health issues”, or is this standard level anxiety/depression? The article doesn’t really clarify, and I get the feeling that’s on purpose.
“There are people out there who I think are trying to play both sides of the game,” said Jerome Limoge, an aviation medical examiner in Colorado Springs who gives physicals to hundreds of pilots a year. “They’re being encouraged by VA to claim everything. Some of it is almost stolen valor.”
If they get put through the meat grinder that is the US military complex, maybe they should be able to claim the benefits they deserve. This is just veteran-flavored welfare queen rhetoric. And it’s not like VA benefits are worth shit anyway…
There’s a line to walk between preventing tragedies like Germanwings Flight 9525 and putting undue stress on pilots. This both puts undue stress on pilots and ironically makes a similar disaster more likely. Bringing the hammer down on people with mental health problems doesn’t make them go away, it just makes people go undiagnosed and untreated.
Yeah, because they don’t want to starve. Welcome to capitalism.
