A case like this does not suddenly explode without previous signs that something is wrong. Also the very construction with the responsible doctor practitioning in her private clinic while at the same time authorising (or not) her competition in the field, was bizarre. Of course the Danish CAA must take some responsibility for that, and for letting it get so far out of hand. But they did reimburse additional costs to pilots for having to get that extra medical – I was one of them.
What appear to have happened after all this, is that the CAA went from being too lax about the oversight, to the opposite extreme. Some AMEs have had their authorisations revoked permanently immediately after making an error, without being given a chance to defend themselves or correct the error. The general climate between the CAA and the AMEs has deteriorated and many AMEs have closed their clinics since the scandal, and Denmark is now lacking AME’s.
Serious question: how did those who used these docs find them in the first place? Were they listed on the Danish CAA website?
huv wrote:
What appear to have happened after all this, is that the CAA went from being too lax about the oversight, to the opposite extreme
It appears to me that something is very rotten, or there is some sort of “instability” within the Danish CAA, this for instance making headlines right now all over social media. Not medical, but more of the same extreme position.
Shows the amount of money to be made is interesting enough to attract this type of business practice.
But seriously – no one can be this stupid and expect it to not blow up in their face. It must be either honest incompetence or an act of desparation.
But they did reimburse additional costs to pilots for having to get that extra medical – I was one of them.
Well, only for danes. I lost both my medical and my money. Had to do an initial all over again.
It has been claimed that CAAs use various statistical approaches to try to detect “easy” AMEs.
However, one retired AME told me that his fail rate was only about 5%. I said to him that this is obviously too low and he agreed; he said most of the prospective failure cases know they will fail and self-disqualify.
With say a 5% failure rate it will be very hard to detect “easy” AMEs, because an AME may do only 100-200 medicals a year and if the failure rate is just 5% then the data will be too thin to draw conclusions from.
In the UK (which is not the topic here) there is the additional option of moving to the PMD system (UK only except in Annex 1 in which case you can do France as well) and that makes it practically impossible to detect an “easy” AME because such an AME will not be seeing that candidate in the first place.
But seriously – no one can be this stupid and expect it to not blow up in their face. It must be either honest incompetence or an act of desparation.
I think one needs to appreciate just how much is at stake. A medical failure is a huge thing; a great livehood for a commercial pilot, and a great hobby for a private pilot into which he/she has invested a huge amount of time and probably many tens of thousands of € especially if an IR holder. Most people will pay almost any money to keep flying. And this is nothing new; the Hungary route existed 20+ years ago and was very popular especially for airline pilots.
It has been claimed that CAAs use various statistical approaches to try to detect “easy” AMEs.
My guess would be that CAAs rely on info conveyed to them by individuals, there are plenty of disgruntled patients looking for retribution, and don’t respond to that until they feel a threat if they continue to do nothing. This is not important enough to attract much CAA attention nor to see diligent, intelligent people involved – it’s not a field that attracts many of them to begin with, other than the AMEs themselves who all do it for the easy money.
There are plenty of disgruntled patients looking for retribution
Wouldn’t these mostly be complaining about the honest AMEs?
