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Comment by user_7832 | Hacker News Reader

Could someone with an aviation background chime in on what this entails? I would think that VTOL pilot/aircraft certification would be more stricter/tighter than light aircrafts. I wonder if this move was made by the FAA being slightly concerned about the safety, though the AW609 mentioned in the (initial) part of the article is a light aircraft... which raises the question on why VTOL rules weren't applied right from the start.

Side note: why does this website restrict copying text, or even middle-button scrolling?

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> which raises the question on why VTOL rules weren't applied right from the start.

I've had limited dealings with the FAA but my overall impression is they struggle to deal with change.

They don't handle medical certifications well—God help you if you take an antidepressant and want to fly a plane, they failed on the 5G-radio altimeter issue, they can't approve a leadless fuel despite having one that passes all their tests and meets their standards, and now this.

I don't think that's entirely fair. Yes, they seem very conservative and often taking a punitive approach, but: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/07/20210728-g100ul.htm... "FAA approves first high-octane unleaded avgas", for medical certification there's now BasicMed, the new light airplane certification standards mentioned in the article are a lot less prescriptive than the old ones, and they're now working on the MOSAIC changes to make special-airworthiness certificate rules more flexible.

BasicMed came from Congress, not the FAA. And true to congressional style, it disproportionately benefits the elderly - it requires you had a valid medical within the past 10 years, which helps if age related health issues stop you from renewing, but not if you were never eligible for one in the first place.

Not true, the requirement is to ever have had a 3rd class medical. So yes, you still need to see a medical examiner once, but after that you never have to again.

And I'd argue it does not benefit the elderly, it benefits everyone. Instead of having to find and pay a hundred bucks to a medical examiner every two years I can now accomplish this by having a chat with my primary physician, which I see anyway, every four years. I think it's hugely beneficial to all recreational pilots.

But you're right in that the FAA had to be forced to do it.

So I looked this up [1] and it turns out we're both wrong - you need to have had a valid medical at some time after 2016-07-14.

That date is exactly 10 years before congress passed the Basic Med law, so when basic med was new, it was "in the last 10 years", but the law pinned it to a specific date, not a specific number of years in the past.

[1]: https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certificates/airmen_certificati...

Basicmed was mandated by Congress and forced through with the FAA kicking and screaming the whole way.

I deal with the FAA regularly and I agree with your overall impression. The people you deal with at the bottom/middle of the organization are incredibly reliant on existing rules/wording that when something new comes up they often seem to lack common sense.

You may have some luck with antidepressants. What about ADHD (even with treatment)? Even more luck is needed.

A few antidepressants are now allowed. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av...

Having ever been diagnosed with ADHD is disqualifying, as is taking any ADHD/psychotropic medication to mitigate the condition. All you can do is take a day-long battery of psych tests to demonstrate that you never had ADHD in the first place.

It’s three or four old SSRIs and that comes with with other caveats and requirements. I’m also a private pilot wannabe and the FAA situation in regard to this is bullshit. Is there a chart somewhere showing how many small planes fall out of the sky due to some dude taking his meds?

> Is there a chart somewhere showing how many small planes fall out of the sky due to some dude taking his meds?

Well, probably. The FAA is the accident investigation authority on the US, if anyone has that chart, it's them. (I know I don't have that information, but last time I worked on a safety related area (not on the US), and worked into getting a relation of causes for accidents, almost no cause had enough accidents linked to it to do any kind of analysis.)

I am personally against strict regulation for general aviation, but most of the eVTOL isn't general aviation (I'm not sure why people are lumping it there).

The major thing is that the FAA loves to approve what someone at the FAA has already previously approved. So if you have parts of the aircraft, avionics, pilot operating manual, performance values, etc that have previously been approved by the FAA then it is much easier to get them approved again because the precedent exists that it is ok. Someone else did all the heavy-lifting to get that first approval signature.

By classifying them as the relatively rare "Powered-lift" category they have created a huge bureaucratic hurdle to overcome. You've gone from thousands of approved airframes to a handful of approved airframes. You can still work through it but there isn't a precedent for them to easily point to for fast approval.

> Side note: why does this website restrict copying text, or even middle-button scrolling?

User-hostile moronity like this is pervasive and infuriating. If you're an Apple user get Stop The Madness -- I never see this crap.

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