Feds probing roughly 5k pilots suspected of withholding major health issues | Hacker News Reader

Feds probing roughly 5k pilots suspected of withholding major health issues

businessinsider.com

61 pointsthunderbong93 comments

"The pilots who have had their records examined are military veterans who informed the Federal Aviation Administration that they were suitable to fly, but didn't disclose that they were also receiving veterans benefits for various disabilities that could prevent them from effectively sitting in a pilot's seat."

This is just my anecdotal observations, but I've seen that military veterans are extremely adept at gaming the system to their benefit. They are able to maximize disability benefits as well as GI Bill benefits. I've known and worked with multiple veterans and each one of them gamed these systems to maximum benefit. It also appeared that they coached each other on how to obtain maximum benefit.

With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if the health issues in this article were largely exaggerated specifically for the purpose of maximizing benefits.

I’m not a vet, but I wonder if it comes from working in an environment that is so massive, at times wasteful, and your contributions feel insignificant. I think a lot of people could convince themselves that if they don’t take advantage of something, someone else will.

The moment you realize debt is devalued over time and begin taking on debt to acquire hard assets, like anybody who is smart with their money, you are gaming the system. Its not to say people aren't legitimately creating value or building good businesses, but those businesses necessarily must pay the minimum required taxes to be competitive in the market against someone else who will. Politicians invest in stocks that their forthcoming policies will predictably pump. The whole of it all is gaming the system in one way or another. I'm a vet and I need to get back to spamming the VA to increase my disability benefits even though I feel the best I ever have now.

Debt is devalued in time when interest rates raise. The last couple of years aside, debt value has been increasing since interest rates peaked in late 1970s.

Debt is devalued because the money is getting cheaper, I know in 20 years my debt will be easier to manage even though the payments in the nominal denomination of currency has not changed. Inflation is programmatic in a monetary system where currency can only be created through debt, if there werent inflation then every existing dollar would eventually disappear to pay interest to the fed, and there would still be outstanding debt. The practical implications of this are that even if there is a touch of inflation then it can cause a contagion even that shuts down the banks.

> I’m not a vet, but I wonder if it comes from working in an environment that is so massive, at times wasteful, and your contributions feel insignificant

Simple formula ( greed + opportunity ). Everyone from politicians to doctors to lowly grunts game the system if they can. Just because you are elected, are educated or wear a uniform doesn't change your innate human nature. You just hide it better. If you can get disability and work too, why wouldn't you. It's like eating your cake and having it too.

> I think a lot of people could convince themselves that if they don’t take advantage of something, someone else will.

Not themselves. Others. They will try to convince you with that rationalization.

The negative PR from wrongfully denying a vet benefits is so bad, and the system is completely un-incentivized to be cost-effective, that there are basically 0 real eligibility tests.

Any politician (or bureaucrat) who says "you know, maybe we should be denying disability to 20% of these veterans" is going to be strung up and quartered. So, nobody tries.

I'd wager that a big part of the PR hazard is that American taxpayers supported the war(s) – and therefore there is a sense of obligation amongst them that vets should get whatever support they think they need.

Not saying grift is excusable, but there's a lot of checks and balances on this system – not the least of which if a veteran is caught lying, he loses his benefits and may even have to pay them back.

> not the least of which if a veteran is caught lying, he loses his benefits and may even have to pay them back

If you claim PTSD, trauma, or back/knee/joint pain without fabricating the material circumstances of your injury (lying about where you were stationed or what you were doing), there is a 0% chance you will be accused, much less convicted, of lying.

Look for a single vet disability fraud case (and there aren't many, period) where the conviction was for anything other than outright fabrication of service record.

This is said so confidently, but clearly with little to no experience with the military or the VA to back it up. No vet is receiving benefits without something to back up their disability rating, even if that rating is higher than it seemingly "should" be. Some disabilities are easier to establish than others, because the issue causing the disability is so prevalent in the service that the military has little basis to deny them. Hearing loss is a common one. That said, I'm a vet, with significant hearing loss due to my time in (I was an F-16 maintainer on the flightline, an extremely intense noise environment). I'm not eligible for _any_ disability rating at all, because I did not report issues while I was still in the service; but hearing loss issues often take time to become apparent, and it's not like we were being tested for it. It was not uncommon for someone to forget their earplugs (the second layer of hearing protection we had, under our headset), and be essentially forced to go out on the flightline anyway to handle some task around running engines. These events would be downplayed, but just one instance of that can cause irreversible hearing loss.

But that's just a specific issue relevant to my time in the service. The bottom line is that unless you report every little thing that _might_ cause an issue later, you're going to be up shit creek when you get out and find out that something you were exposed to during your service is causing an expensive medical issue that you have to deal with. There are all kinds of fucked up things people had to do while they were in, that they struggle to get compensation for now that the consequences are catching up, because the issues aren't straightforwardly attributable to some event during your service, like with combat injuries. Burn pits are the most notorious one - you have advocates like Jon Stewart fighting in Congress to pass laws to support vets who were forced to work those pits and are now battling all kinds of complications. If anyone should be an obvious beneficiary of the disability system, beyond those with combat injuries, it should be those folks - but they are largely left hanging in the wind. In the case of burn pits especially, the military _knew_ there were consequences to having soldiers work them, but chalked it up as the cost of war.

Frankly, from what I've observed, once vets are out of the service, our country largely gives them the middle finger when they struggle with mental or physical health issues. I say "them" here, because I'm not a combat veteran, and I'm lucky that I had it pretty easy during my tenure (2009-2015), but for many, that is very much not the case. Yeah, nobody in Congress is going to stand up in front of everyone and say "let's make disability benefits harder to obtain" - but I have no doubt they'd have few, if any, qualms about doing it behind closed doors.

Am a military veteran. While I know there's plenty of grift on this front, I'd like to point out that you have to become extremely adept at gaming the system even if you have a legitimate injury/disability.

The games the VA plays to deny benefits are just as cynical and brazen as many other things the government writ large has done to conceal dangers to veterans – dangers that can have far, far-reaching health consequences. I welcome you to look up the development and deployment of Agent Orange for an example that is still killing people today.

Edit: https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/publications/agent...

I am well aware of Agent Orange and am also aware that anyone that was anywhere close to Agent Orange figures out a way to correlate every single health issue they experience to Agent Orange.

I'm not saying that Agent Orange wasn't a problem and, of course, it caused health issues for many people. What I am saying is that a 80 year old man, that is 100 pounds overweight, who develops diabetes didn't necessarily get diabetes from Agent Orange exposure.

Yes, that is exactly the same logic the VA uses to deny claims to people who did in fact get diabetes from Agent Orange exposure.

Looks like you have a bright future in claims adjustment! ;-)

Edit: There's plenty of evidence connecting Agent Orange exposure to a whole host of illnesses that only manifest later in life – including Diabetes. It's even on the VA's own site: https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/publications/agent...

How do you conclusively attribute diabetes to agent orange 40 years after the fact? What test do you run, and what scientific methodology do you employ?

We are real bad at connecting dots that take more than a few years to happen. So many other things happen to us every day. Even if some bad action doubles your odds of a certain outcome.. that means it is still 50/50 if the original thing "caused" your bad outcome.

My grandfather was killed by agent orange. He wound up with some extremely rare lung condition, but according to the VA, it wasn't the right lung condition so they denied his claim. He didn't die in his 80s, he died in his early 60s.

The VA also claimed he was never exposed because he wasn't in one of the units they claim were exposed, that's the other game they play. He was in a mobile unit that was sent to various places in theater, so the government doesn't have the documentation of where they actually were, but claims they know he wasn't exposed. He told me first hand he woke up one morning and the jungle outside the base was completely gone.

We don't know what agent orange did to people. Agent orange wasn't even the only defoliant used. How much of it was stored improperly? How much of it was contaminated during manufacturing with other compounds?

Fortunately, we still use 2,4-D, half the mix of agent orange, so we all get to find out first hand.

The simple fact is that human physiology isn't as simple as 50/50. All kinds of things can contribute to Diabetes, to be sure, but studies have shown that a lot of these illnesses are probabilistic in nature, e.g. there's a higher incidence of things like diabetes amongst people who've been exposed to AO even when corrected for other variables.

https://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/publications/agent...

Of course, I haven't even broached the moral obligation the American public has to men they send to war...

As someone who practices law in a disability-adjacent field, I can assure you that gaming ssdi isn’t restricted to former military.

It's the FAA's normal mental health brigade horseshit, except this time it's the FAA snooping around in VA records just because they can.

It looks like the veterans being targeted have various concerns like PTSD, which the FAA finds that as soon as you even think you're depressed, they want to revoke your pilots license because they think you'll immediately pull Some Shit in the air.

The average person has no clue how bad mental health is in the aviation sector and how hard it has to be hidden so they can actually keep doing what they love -- to fly.

> the FAA has subjected him to costly frequent drug tests, and doctor's visits with FAA-approved experts who don't accept insurance

> the FAA wouldn't accept other doctor's notes saying that he was perfectly fine to fly a plane

The FAA throws up some massive gates as soon as you get flagged like this and forces you to go to a battery of doctors and psychs that only they can apparently decide your fate.

Right, its not like hundreds of people's lives are in these pilot's hands. I can't imagine what a depressed pilot might do..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

Perfectly competent pilots have killed more people than depressed ones since the beginning of flight. Empirically, non-depressed pilots are more of a risk to the public. But they don't get this kind of stigma.

It’s also one of the more glaring issues still present in regard to mental health stigmatization - that people with mental health issues are a danger to others.

The overwhelming majority of people experiencing mental health issues are only a danger to themselves (worst case).

The differences in suicide rates compared to murder-suicide rates back this up but per usual extremely rare cases or murder-suicide grab headlines while the 125 suicides per day on average in the US are completely unknown to anyone other than the people personally impacted by them.

Not only are murder-suicides sensational, the “murder” component bypasses the otherwise standard media practice of not reporting on suicides because of the data on upticks in additional suicides due to reporting.

Do you know what prevents people from doing that? Being able to get help for their problems. Do you know what doesn't? Forcing them to hide their problems so they are able to keep their job.

The discussion isn't really about whether suicidal pilots should be allowed to fly - it's whether the system should allow for pilots with mental health concerns (which would be a large majority of them over the course of an entire career) to seek treatment for it without losing their job.

100% Exactly this.

It's outright irresponsible to not take into account the chilling effect this is going to have on seeking treatment for mental health problems.

To speak a little more to this - there's a lot of jokes in the aviation community about mental health.. such as "Do you know how many pilots the FAA claims have mental health issues? None. Do you know how many pilots lie about their mental health issues? All of them."

When I have students go in for a medical, even if they're just gonna be run of the mill private pilots, I tell them "Answer every question with as few words as possible. If the AME (medical examiner) asks you if you've ever been sad, say "No". 'What about when your dad died?' Say no. When you got that diagnosis for cancer five years ago? Wasn't sad. Puppy died as a child? Wasn't sad. Never sad. Never anxious. Never depressed. Never anything. Just cool like Steve McQueen. If it's not in your medical records then it never happened.

then I get asked who the hell is Steve McQueen.

If you crash the plane if you are depressed the reason is not that you are depressed. The reason is you are a psychopath.

Mmm, keep spreading that paranoia and lack of compassion for people with mental health disorders.

There are depressed people in every single aspect of human society, including the scary critical ones people like you fear.

Unfortunately, people like you who think this is an actual talking point make it impossible for the people who need help in critical positions to get that help by stigmatizing the existence of the issue in the first place.

People like you who cherry pick the negative outcomes of mental health disorders while ignoring that most suffer in silence for the "safety" of others like you are the problem.

Advocating against yourself. Lack of freedom is a grand cause of the world we live in today - revoking more of it is how you end up on the wrong side of that.

> I've seen that military veterans are extremely adept at gaming the system to their benefit. They are able to maximize disability benefits as well as GI Bill benefits.

I'm not in the USA but really to me that's just seems like they are getting what they should. Any citizen of any country should get medical care free of charge. Military veterans whether their issue is from combat or not I think should get all the care they can. If the system is working against you and you can find ways to fight back and help others that is OK with me.

These benefits (and the gaming of them) are not about receiving medical care. These veterans already get free medical care from the VA. It's about monetary payments. They game the VA disability system to get paid.

I’m not sure how “gaming” it is possible when the VA either performs (or contracts out) medical exams for a veteran’s specific claim and determines whether the veteran is eligible or not. It’s not like they just take a veteran’s word for it.

I work on a military base and can attest to this. Many prior enlisted (veterans) feel that they get shafted (screwed or taken advantage of) by the contract between themselves and USG during their service. Their pay is low and transitioning back to a civilian lifestyle is incredibly difficult, despite their compulsory, Congress-mandated transition assistance training. Maximizing their disability claims is one way of getting what they deserve.

The VA has a disability rating system that goes from 0% to 100%. Obtaining a 100% disability rating guarantees a certain amount of monthly income for life. The step increase in pay from 80% disability to 100% disability is large. There’s also a logarithmic function that makes it increasingly difficult to raise your disability rating after each disability claim. Hypothetically, losing your left leg might qualify for 50% disability, losing a second leg might qualify for 75%, and then losing an arm might qualify for 87.5%. Pretty horrendous.

That being said, many service members aim to hack the system by making disability claims for everything under the sun. Service members often collect disabilities such as arthritis, lumbar disc degradation, knee injuries, sleep apnea, and depression. Like Pokémon - gotta catch ‘em all.

They can make a claim but it’s ultimately up to the VA’s doctors to determine whether they meet the criteria or not.

That’s not hacking the system - they can’t get examined for something unless they first make a claim. The VA doesn’t perform preemptive exams to see what a veteran may or may not be afflicted with and informing the veteran so they can make the most conservative subset of possible claims.

Yet this article is claiming the opposite... there is some non-zero number of pilots receiving VA funds (for PTSD and similar health concerns) while not reporting those issues to the FAA.

To actually be seen, you mostly need a disability rating. Every veteran has 'free medical care' much in the way that every poor person has free medical care. It exists on paper, but it's impossible to obtain.

A lot of us veterans were paid below the poverty line most of the time we were in the service. Disability benefits are one way many seek to get what they're owed.

Can you provide specific details on this? My understanding is that even if you were continually at the rank of E-1 (which would never happen), your salary + housing + subsistence would put you well over the poverty line.

1. Housing isn't necessarily provided, can depend on rank, marital status, and other factors like the amount of military-provided housing provided on a post (it's often not enough, or of extremely low and even dangerous quality)

2. Salary is provided to the person who is in the service. Unfortunately, the areas that military bases are in are generally not economically productive areas. This especially hurts the spouses who'd otherwise have jobs because they're living in a career desert, and there's not a lot of households today that can survive on a single income. In fact, it was only just this year that the Biden admin finally recognized this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

3. Substinence (I'm going to put healthcare in this category) – so let's say I'm a soldier who gets injured on the job. Not only is military healthcare awful (https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/healthcare/military-hospita...) but often times they won't even properly care for you to the point you could die: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/pentagon-denies-cl... and so you seek second opinions in severe cases, which you have to pay out-of-pocket. Combine this with the fact that the VA will deny real claims for literal decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoring_our_PACT_Act_of_2022 and you're so far up shit creek in a job you can't quit...

The 2020 poverty line for 2 people was 17,240.

The 2020 salary for E-1 was 1,732.94/month or 20,795.28.

This doesn't take into account any housing or other additional allowances.

Sorry, I don't see how a veteran spent their career in the military below the poverty line.

Also, consider there hasn't been a draft for 50 years. No one has forced anyone to take military pay.

> I've known and worked with multiple veterans and each one of them gamed these systems to maximum benefit.

So exactly like private employees & companies?

I'm not sure we should be expecting humans not to game systems to their own benefit. Isn't that basic human nature?

Yes, I think we should expect people to act with integrity. When they don't we should call them out. I'm all for social programs to help people in need, but I end up opposing most of the proposed social programs. Why is this? Because people game them. If people acted with integrity, and only people that truly needed assistance utilized social programs, then I think you'd find far less people oppose them.

Why is it not integrity to use the system to maximize the benefit to myself? Insurance carriers and the medical-industrial complex are notoriously byzantine, and so if anyone can navigate those waters and improve their outcomes, and extract the maximum value of care for themselves, then I think that is exactly what one should be expected to do within the bounds of the system they are given. There is nothing dishonest or "gaming" about it.

When you lie about medical conditions, that is not acting with integrity. If you believe that lying to achieve maximum personal outcomes is, in fact, acting with integrity, then our definition of integrity is vastly different.

It was termed "gaming" and not "lying". Where are you seeing lies?

You acknowledge the need for social programs and back the concept of them, but in practice vote against them because people game the system?

Why not design a system that isn’t susceptible to gaming and doesn’t rely on all people acting with integrity and instead embraces that people will act in their own best interest even if it results in long term worse outcomes overall?

Things like universal health care and universal basic income provide a flat benefit to all, so gaming the system doesn’t give an unfair advantage to some.

“Gaming” is not always equal to fraud though. We should expect legal gaming not outright fraud.

When IBM employees play games with Generic Company the damage to me is marginal. There's - potentially - one less competitor when I go shopping.

When someone plays games with the Federal Government it hurts me directly. Doubly so because public organizations are notoriously unable for a raft of reasons to deal with abuse like that.

If the argument is that it's no less likely to happen I wouldn't disagree. If it's that I shouldn't be any more annoyed - I don't think so.

> This is just my anecdotal observations, but I've seen that military veterans are extremely adept at gaming the system to their benefit. They are able to maximize disability benefits as well as GI Bill benefits. I've known and worked with multiple veterans and each one of them gamed these systems to maximum benefit.

"gamed" is a very loaded term that suggests something untoward is happening as opposed to people just trying to get the benefits they're entitled to as Veterans. Do you have any evidence that the people you've observed are doing something shady or do you just think they're getting more than they deserve?

> It also appeared that they coached each other on how to obtain maximum benefit.

Is it "gaming" the system when I offer my friend advice on how to navigate the byzantine health insurance system in the US?

Yes, I have anecdotal evidence that people are gaming the system to get more than they deserve. I have directly observed multiple Vietnam Vets gaming the Agent Orange system to get 90-100% disability. The would visit multiple doctors to get the wording they needed to supply evidence that some health issue was related to Agent Orange. Their goal was to get a doctor to write down that a particular health issue "might" be related to Agent Orange. Once they achieved that, they would add that health issue on the list of other health issues. Each one would get them 5-20% disability.

To be be clear, you are not a physician who has examined these Vietnam Vets and have determined that their issues are 100% unrelated to Agent Orange?

(responding to to sibling comment)

No, I'm not a doctor that has examined them. I have been told by these people that they want to maximize their disability payments and they can do that by claiming things are caused by agent orange. I've been told by them that they will shop around the diagnosis until they get something in writing they can use. I have been told by these people that they don't care if it is related to agent orange or not, as long as they can get a doctor to write it down.

So basically getting a second opinion from another doctor is somehow fraudulent behavior? If you have a problem with this, shouldn't it be with the quack doctors making the diagnoses and not the patients?

I was diagnosed with ADHD because I (truthfully) told a doctor I had the symptoms of ADHD. Now I have a prescription for adderall. Did I commit fraud?

getting a second opinion is not fraud. but by the time you're getting the tenth opinion just because the first nine docs didn't give you written justification to draw on public funds, that looks pretty fraudulent.

or put a different way, GP is describing people explicitly admitting that they went to as many doctors as it took to get specific language in a note. they admitted that they didn't care at all about any therapeutic outcomes from all those visits. assuming this isn't a tall tale, does that sound like a good faith use of the system to you?

I understand the (rather obvious) basis for this argument, but at what point does the responsibility shift to the doctor? If you don't have a health condition, and you ask ten doctors to diagnose you with one, then isn't the real issue with the tenth doctor who diagnoses you with one, rather than with yourself - the patient - who genuinely believes (given the benefit of the doubt) that you're suffering from symptoms of some condition the other nine doctors wouldn't diagnose you with? I mean, is it really the responsibility of the patient to moderate the quackiness of doctors that are willing to prescribe whatever medication for whatever illness the patient might have? What's the point of doctors if we can't trust them to gatekeep the drugs (and VA benefits) we put them in charge of disbursing?

I think the reflex to blame patients for this situation is revelatory of the real issue, which is that the entire discipline of mental health is disconnected from any physical reality or real basis upon which a "proper" diagnosis can be based.

What happened to medical record confidentiality?

Presumably this is a slow normalization of deviance play, and using people’s medical records against them will be commonplace soon.

Starting with vets is particularly cynical, but sadly unsurprising.

Anyway, since these records can be used to screw vets over, can vets also access the statistics they’d need to prove safety violations and other forms of negligence in the chain of command?

It is routine for government agencies to audit medical claims records for waste, fraud,and abuse. These uses are well-defined in existing American medical privacy laws.

Benefits fraud is a serious issue, but using personal health information to fish for and detect it is a disincentive to people seeking medical help. The whole point of privacy legislation was to protect PHI from being abused like this so that people would actually trust the systems enough to use them.

I had a lifelong dream of becoming a pilot, but after my discharge physical and VA rating I realized I’d likely never be able to due to the diagnosed issues.

This whole saga frustrates me (it’s been going on for a while) because if you actually have the problems you’ve gotten the VA to acknowledge, and the FAA says they are an issue… Well you are lying and gaming the system on one side or another. I’m not a fan of that at all, and as someone who got rated without gaming the system I get to deal with the fallout of being painted with the same brush.

So for those who have that view of vets, please do remember that there are some with less visible disabilities that are honest and doing their best to adapt and not game the system.

I sustained a back injury while on active duty. I have a rating for my back. 90% of the time, I'm able to function normally. Every once in a while, I re aggravate the injury and I'm laid up for a week or 2.

The disability rating ensures I'm able to get treatment from the VA for my service connected condition. I still pay for my own health insurance and see private doctors as the care the VA provides is garbage, but I have it as a back stop if I ever fall on hard times.

Having a disability rating doesn't strictly mean you're disabled, that would be a 100% disability rating.

My back injury is similar; most days I’m ok but there are some (today being one) where it makes life much harder than it needs to be.

The other issues I’ve sustained (I talk about them in other comments elsewhere on here) also present challenges.

Always struck by contrast - aviation regulators who’ve embraced and benefited immensely from no-fault safety reporting can’t seem to rationalize that the entire medical qualification system for pilots is killing people (literally in the case of German Wings).

System as designed encourages concealment by ending careers and destroying livelihoods. One obviously can’t fly commercial airliners impaired or with a material medical condition, but one can’t manage that risk without data. We need a no-fault early retirement fund or some similar mechanism needs to be out there to help get psychologically distressed pilots out of the cockpit and into treatment…with a possible path back too.

Just a terrible and inhumane situation all around.

I expect a major pilot shortage in recent years. Not too long ago many of them were on strike [1] [2], due to apparently bad pay and high burnout. It really is a thankless profession.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/29/southwest-pilots-union-lays-...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/united-ai...

It's a high skill profession in an industry that largely competes on cost. One will find similarly thankless jobs in manufacturing, agriculture, and any other industry where the push is to squeeze margins as much as possible.

Everything about flying has become substantially worse except safety. The only way the industry is able to maintain its safety record is by being heavily regulated and never changing anything.

The difference of course, is that pilots can squeeze airlines almost infinitely if they want to, because without pilots, the whole operation stops. They're the difference between flights happening and not happening, and they aren't easy to replace, and certainly not easy to replace quickly

Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't flexed this more.

They probably have less power than you think. If they actually shut down all aviation and didn’t have a very convincing PR strategy, they’d find an infuriated public (you can’t go to your daughter’s wedding, your grandpa’s funeral, etc.), which the airlines (and the government, which has a serious interest in seeing air commerce working smoothly) would absolutely use to their advantage.

Don’t forget that when ATCs actually followed your logic, Reagan responded by firing them all, and even though in more recent years this has been cast as the horrible beginning-of-the-end for American unions, at the time he had broad public support, because people were incensed that one profession could shut down air travel.

All this is to say that I think pilots’ unions do have a good sense of how hard to push and not push. They don’t have infinite leverage.

It is also illegal for them to strike without going through mediation, etc. Pilots are allowed to vote to go on strike at any time (and they can have picket lines as if they were on strike) but they cannot stop showing up for work.

Pilots are one of the few professions that are covered under the Railway Labor Act, so federal mediators have lots of power to reach an agreement between airlines and pilots

Right, that’s what I mean: pilots are not legally permitted to stop showing up for work. They could stop anyway in an illegal strike, which is what the ATCs did in 1981, but this would be a very high-risk gamble.

Government will solve this by opening up H1B visas to pilots.

ALPA would never allow that - you can start flying a 737 or similar in Europe with a wet 200-hour commercial license. In the US you need an R-ATP with 1500 hours before you can even be considered and even then you're going to start on something smaller. For context, I've been flying recreationally since 2017 with two or three long pauses (6+ months) and have well over 200 hours. You could hit 200 hours in the first 12-14 months if you were dedicated, picking up your instrument and commercial on the way.

Sadly it's a bit like game development. Pilots love to fly, that's why they went through all the time and effort to qualify and unfortunately, the corporations that hire them know and abuse that fact.

Commercial airline pilots - ones for the planes you typically fly on - make great money, have a strong union that negotiates well on their behalf, have tons of job protections, hours protections, and lots of control over their schedule once they have seniority.

It is a good job in most people's estimation, they are not victims.

Is Germanwings Flight 9525[0] the worst case of how this can go terribly badly if these pilots are not treated with kindness and assured of a dignified retirement?

[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

By 2017, Lufthansa had paid €75,000 to the family of every victim, as well as €10,000 in pain and suffering compensation to every close relative of a victim.

Wow. These compensation amounts seem… incredibly low. Is this some upper limit under German law? I’d have assumed compensation would be in the order of €1m.

[*] https://www.keystonelaw.com/keynotes/how-is-compensation-cal...

There are probably a handful of incidences like this, and statistically several where this was the truth but we have no way of ever knowing (e.g. MH370).

I'm not sure how it could get any worse than this? At the end of the day you will never have a system that will protect you against a homicidal pilot. The closest you can get is requiring two pilots in the cockpit at all times, but if the bigger and stronger of the two wants to kill everyone anyway, there's little stopping them from just trying to kill the other pilot first while the door is locked.

You think this is bad? You should see the lengths people with security clearances will go to in order to hide the fact they need mental healthcare. By the time they finally get it, they're already beaming mental radio commands from Venus.

This sadly reminds me of Germanwings Flight 9525. Detecting mental illness can be very, very difficult. Pilots will not seek therapy or medical care for mental health issues if they think they could lose their job because of it. Authorities should know when there is a pilot with serious mental concerns. Short of breaking a wall of privacy I don't see how we can bridge this divide.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-madness-in-our-metho...

When it comes to the subject of mental health, the FAA is absolutely full of shit, and everyone involved knows it.

The same goes for the VA, though that situation seems to be improving gradually, at least on a case-by-case basis.

This story is yet another instance of an unelected federal agency using bullshit from another unelected federal agency to drum up FUD; all in order to make themselves appear to be useful.

We can all see the perverse incentives that are driving this situation. We can all see the outcome of this system. It's well past time for a change.

The German Crash. They instituted a preventative measure in 2015, already gone by 2017.

Low Cost is always the most important thing. Lives are cheap.

Unless there are like 2-3 crashes in a year, directly attributable to mental health, then the decision will be to let pilots suffer, it is cheaper.

From Wiki:

Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that required two authorized personnel in the cockpit at all times but, by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule.

The mental health limitations around flight are how you get malaysian air flight 370. Don't say anything, treat anything, work through anything involving mental health because you'll lose your license immediately. Therefore the folks with milder mental illnesses will never solo pilot a plane, and folks with serious psychopathic mental illness, especially if it appears after they begin working, will kill everyone on board.

Is there any confirmed connection between MA370 and mental health, or are you speculating?

https://archive.is/OO0MG

Next up, catastrophic lack of pilots leads to cancellation of many flights.

Not making a value judgment, just a prediction.

This seems to be based on a misunderstanding. SSDI really doesn’t have anything to do with actual disability.

I wouldn't call it harassment. It's clear it's just easier to catch the vets because they also lied to the VA. I admit they VA has it short comings. But there more vets in need then there are not,embellishing your condition to get more benefits is dishonorable.

What's not surprising is pilots who lie about their health to keep making money. Especially in this economy.

Dishonorable? Lying us into wars is dishonorable. Stop putting government bureaucrats in charge of so much money, its obvious they can't spend it appropriately, I could get a hell of a lot more bang for my buck out of spending my own money.

I'm very personally against the war state and general US imperialism but I don't think the "bang for your buck" argument is necessarily true. I couldn't personally secure alliances with or occupations of oil rich nations that allow for me to have access to extremely cheap energy. I think I benefit from it, but that doesn't make it just

Why can't a business like exxon secure contracts for your oil? You benefit from the government doing it on a first order where the worlds oil is priced in your native currency, secondary effects may include the world hating you, the destruction of domestic production, your cultural traditions fading into obscurity, corruption, the joining of political and corporate interests. Ask your doctor before taking.

What do you mean by "secure contracts" in this context?

Exxon signs a contract with oil producers in Iraq or Saudi Arabia, Exxon pays them for the oil and those countries provide it, they put it on a boat and ship it to the US, the put it in a gas station and sell it to you by the gallon.

No I rather like that you are required to give some of your income back to the whole of society, it's a good practice to not be so closed and isolated.

Why do I need to be required? I give money to people who do good things without being required, and I'd give a lot more if I had more money. Build good FOSS and I'll send you some money, make a meme that advances the culture, I'll send you some money, down on your luck I'll send you some money, even when I was broke I'd send friends money if it meant I was rationing ramen and beans. The idea that people won't help each other out without being required seems like projection, and before there was an income tax we still had roads, rails, schools/colleges, and a military, so the idea that we need this might seem obvious, but history does not prove it out.

I can't argue with that. You've make good points. Both my parents were vets and I was in ROTC and civil air patrol for many years.

"This economy" is doing pretty great at the moment. Inflation down, market up, jobs for basically anyone reading this forum are available, unless you confuse "literally being thrown at you from all angles" with unavailable.

Have you ever dealt with the VA? They will lie, cheat, and steal to deny benefits at any and all opportunities. Not saying that that makes lying to them or the government right, but how many people need to draw a straight line from their work on the deck of an aircraft carrier and their permanent hearing loss, or similar very obvious conditions, only to have the VA say "Not Service Connected" and deny all claims? It's no wonder you have people go to coaching before every VA meeting to know what keywords will get their claim denied or fast-tracked.

My mom is a vet and 1 of 2 that I'm a caregiver for. So yea, I've dealt with them. I have 45 days of vacation saved to deal with their crap. Luckily my mom gets transportation benefits that helps.

I can't argue with why they do it. It's survival. I just know instead of working/gaming the system, we need to change it.

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