David Wartofsky, owner/operator of Potomac Airfield, closest of the Maryland 3 airports to downtown Washington D.C., who has filed petition to replace the FAA’s 3rd class medical with a driver’s license for private flying, passes along this recent comment to his petition from Dr. Donald Senter. You can read the full comment below, but we wanted to highlight Dr. Senter’s closing salvo: “If they are safe to drive in the horrible traffic to get to an airport, they are safe to fly a light aircraft.”
Here is his full comment:
“This comment is in support of David Wartofsky’s excellent petition. I am a practicing physician of 45 years, a pilot for 44 years with private and commercial ratings. I was the Director of Aeromedical Services and Chief Flight Surgeon for the USAF 4th Tac Fighter Wing from 1966 to 1968. For many years was a FAA Senior Flight Medical Examiner. Have done in the past 100’s to thousands of flight medical exams for both civilian and military purposes.
“For private flying, the bureaucratic hassle of flight physicals has always been an burden that is not needed. It is my opinion that it’s a self-serving bureaucracy more interested in prolonging its power and control over citizens and frequently discriminates against pilots and those who want to be pilots. They stay 10 to 20 years behind the current practice of medicine in updating their regulations. Changes in the rules are frequently only after NTSB mandates or lawsuits.
“I wrote a much more lengthy comment but the time out lost all of it, perhaps this is another Washington error.
“Pilots do their own medical certification every time they get in their car or in their plane. This is not like flying a U-2 or SR-71 where a medical exam precedes every flight. If they are safe to drive in the horrible traffic to get to an airport, they are safe to fly a light aircraft.”
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This is a great step forward. In the years I was able to use my plane for business travel I never had a close call while flying. However numerous times I was run off the road or had to run off the road to avoid a motor vehicle crash on the way to the airport. It’s almost like once I reach the airport, the umpire shouts, “SAFE”.
I might add that times when I was a bit under the weather I would drive instead of fly.
While driving I have been almost hit by people driving humongous Recreational Vehicles which probably weigh in excess of 20,000 pounds. Some of those drivers, operating at legal speeds of about 60 MPH on a 2 lane road pass other vehicles, including loaded school buses almost head on at closing speeds of 120 MPH. Some of those RV drivers appear as if they can’t see more than a few feet past the windshield.
I have been flying as a sport pilot for five years…My doctors say I am fine.. I am 3000 hour x navy pilot. I fly an Ercoupe which is a little more difficult than most of the Cessnas or light Beechcrafts I owned all of them… The third class medical is a joke…It never did a thing for m.
I know a lot more people would fly if they weren’t concerned about their medical. I fly lsa and love it, but I would fly Cessnas if I could on a Driver’ s license.
Seems doing away with the 3rd class is picking up speed. When do you think AOPA and EAA are going to get on the band wagon – its time to finish this issue and we need everyone on board. This should not take decades to do – A lot of us support the bigger aviation organizations and it is time they take a stand one way or another – are they with us or not.
I don’t know if we can last long enough to see this happen, but I sure hope so. This would do for GA what the Sport Pilot rule was supposed to do, but didn’t for several reasons.
Not allowing a certificated pilot to fly under SP rules if he fails a physical is stupid. But to allow a person who could never have qualified for a third class medical to fly an SP airplane simply because he never failed a physical is idiotic!
And the airplanes, are too expensive, the regulatory requirements on weight, speed and configuration are arbitrary and serve no real purpose except to create a new industry rather than build on the existing infrastructure of GA. Why do a Cessna 150 or Cherokee 140, as well as any number of other postwar airplanes with electrical systems, not qualify as SP airplanes?