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AVIATION SPECIALISTS, TOGETHER

¿SHOULD LICENSED ENGINEERS UNDERGO MEDICAL CHECKS?

BY RICARD MARTINEZ - POSTED 05/02/2022

As a commercial helicopter pilot, I recently had to renew my medical check. Moreover, being engaged onto single pilot passenger transport, and being over my 40s, this means I am required to do so every 6 months.

While in the waiting area between test and test, I had enough time to think about this post.

It is quite obvious that pilots need to be up to the fitness standards, but... ¿how about engineers?

Yes, indeed engineers are not such a critical individual whose collapse can compromise the safety of a flight at a given moment, however I still wonder whether this safety compromise could come in the long term somehow.

As said in a previous post, we still rely very much in the engineers' senses and judgement when it comes to visual inspection and failure/fatigue detection.

With my 20+ years of experience as engineer, I can state with no shame that I had good days, and bad days, and that external facts have affected my performance.

This is pretty much covered by the Human Factor trainings, which are being renewed every 2 years. Such trainings often emphasize on ergonomics and convenient light and noise levels at the workplace, in order to protect the engineer. But, ¿who monitors the engineers' health in line with these measures?

As said, from my own experience and from observing other colleagues' as well, I can tell that some engineers, sometimes, can go through stuff. We are all humans.

It can be stuff coming from your personal life which affects your judgement, integrity and behaviour. It can also be substance abuse or depression given by mishandled personal problems. And it can be a fast deterioration of your cognitive skills given by an unnoticed medical condition.

Any of these examples could lead to installing a component incorrectly, skipping some critical maintenance steps, or being unable to spot a critical failure. This all having as a result releasing an aircraft to service in an unsafe manner.

Yes, we do have duplicate inspections and other measures during the certification process which are designed to spot such human errors. But seems to me like no one ever takes a look at the (possible) root cause until the fault is triggered.

Well, perhaps someone does but personally I've never seen it, and for sure there's no EASA/FAA regulation in this regard.

This is just a personal opinion and I would like our readers to comment on this.

¿Would you find convenient for employers/regulators to require engineers undergo a Medical Class II, and stay current on it?

Please share your ideas.

Stay healthy.