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Comment by souprock | Hacker News Reader

I believe the F-22 uses air that is oxygen-enriched by a mechanical device that does some sort of filtering/diffusion process.

Picture this:

It's time to go fly. The alarm is going off, and you need to get in your jet. Boogers are streaming down your face, and you are experiencing sneezing fits that have you bent over with your eyes closing and tearing up. You can put on a mask with nice clean air, but it'll take an hour before you are in condition to fly. Sitting there on the runway waiting for your allergies to stop acting up is not acceptable.

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I wouldn't want to be dealing with itchy eyes and sneezing when I need my full attention managing the airplane in combat. The hay fever drugs make one dizzy (and it says on the label to not take them when operating machinery). (I have hay fever. One nice thing about getting older is my hay fever symptoms have steadily declined. They were rather bad when I was fighter pilot age.)

You'll also need a HEPA filter to filter out pollen, just a dust filter won't do it.

Not all allergies are like that. I would wager the vast majority are pretty mild symptoms easily treatable with anti-histamines. I myself have allergies, but I never even notice because the air at work is filtered and I'm not outside long enough for symptoms to manifest as I travel to and from my car.

Maybe the case could be made for fighter pilots (though I still think it's a non-issue for 99% of people with seasonal allergies), but what's the excuse for disqualifying for all aircraft? Airline pilots can have allergies and fly. How is that much different from a heavy cargo plane?

> How is that much different from a heavy cargo plane?

1. Deployed environments are often less than pretty. There's pretty much no comparison between a peacetime US/Europe life and wartime, even at airbases.

2. In the military, aircrews are expected to go down behind enemy lines, regardless of how often it happens against terrorist groups. They want to maximize your probability of survival after the crash/shootdown. Medical preconditions of any kind don't really help that.

Well, all that's going to do is create an incentive to lie about your medical history so you don't get DQ'd and/or artificially limit the size of your pilot candidate pool, thus creating an even bigger shortage.

Non-pilot millitary personnel get deployed and are on the ground in war zones 10x more than pilots (especially in the army) and they aren't disqualified for having allergies.

It's just not a big deal except in the most egregious of hay fever cases

While I don't agree with the initial assertion of Oxygen masks being incompatible with seasonal allergies I will say that the Docs are looking to disqualify you as early in the pipeline as possible, reason being: $$$. In addition, the only times I've heard of specific pipeline disqualification is if you "anthro out" of certain aircraft, i.e too big or too small for the cockpit.

Source: Marine Pilot.

Antihistamines make you sleepy. That's why they are usually on "do not fly if you're taking it" list, even for commercial and private pilots.

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