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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

This is a super-edge-case but if you happen to want to be a pilot (either small planes all the way up to airlines), the FAA considers ADHD and other attention-deficit conditions to be disqualifying. If you're taking medication for ADHD or similar conditions and want to be a pilot, you're dead in the water until you get off them and can show that you don't have some kind of attention difficulty. FYI!

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You need the non-ADHD people to fly the the regular boring things from A to B, and you need the ADHD people to be able to take the right decisions about what to do in a split second while being under extreme duress in a war zone.

Almost any medical condition disqualifies you. Almost any medication taken regularly does too.

I am interested in getting my private pilot's license and I _should_ be able to get a Class 3 Medical from what I've seen, but that will be a bit away so I have time.

What I've seen and heard from others is to just lie. Seems like many have gotten to the point of realizing trying to do it right is only going to put you in months of bureaucracy and spend thousands proving your viability.

The FAA needs to figure out how to either commission studies to reduce their list of disqualifications or streamline the process of appealing your medical certification.

Most common medical history items fall under something called CACI: Conditions AMEs Can Issue. (Yes, that's an acronym in an acronym. Welcome to the FAA. AME is the doctor you see for your flight physical, which you probably already know, but other readers might not.) The vast majority of folks walk out of their flight physicals with a medical certificate thanks to CACI.

ADHD does not fall under CACI, and will trigger a deferral to the FAA. The FAA will then refer the applicant to a HIMS AME. (Human Intervention Motivation Study.) HIMS is really about substance abuse, not ADHD, but it's doing double-duty now for things like ADHD and the four conditionally approvable SSRIs. ADHD can also trigger expensive neurocognitive tests ("CogScreen"). So ADHD really is in a separate class of conditions when it comes to getting a medical certificate.

Current use of stimulants is a denial no matter what.

As a flight instructor I think this is completely bonkers. The nature of ADHD is such that if it keeps a person from being able to fly safely, that will show up during training as a failure to meet performance standards. It's completely different from something like a heart condition, where a pilot will fly just fine until suddenly their heart stops. I've taught lots of folks with ADHD diagnoses; almost all of them did great, and the few that didn't were very obviously not able to handle the airplane.

Thank you for the kind response to my inaccurate post. You can tell my frustration on this.

And yes, I do love acronyms in acronyms. My first job was in the government, the US gov't truly loves their acronyms.

I empathize 100% with your frustration. I went through the wringer to get my first medical and have watched a lot of students go through this. It sucks, and there’s no good reason for it to.

Fascinating, but appears to make sense. Hopefully, some day we will be able to quantify the difference so that people like me (who do worry that they can't stay on top of all the details in a plane) are excluded from flying¹ while other people who have a similar condition to mine but are capable of flying are allowed to do so.

¹ As much as I want to.

Personally, as a person with ADHD, I am fine with that restriction.

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