The UK Civil Aviation Authority has launched a review of the Pilot Medical Declarations (PMD) process.
A consultation will help the regulator consider how the system is working as it seeks to enhance a pilot’s user experience and identify opportunities as part of the simplification and rationalisation of General Aviation (GA) flight crew licensing.
Following the launch of Pilot Medical Declarations (PMD) in October 2016, 14,000 PMDs have been submitted.
A post-implementation internal review of the PMD process, undertaken in October 2020, concluded that the PMD process needed to be examined and potentially amended.
The Civil Aviation Authority’s review is one of 46 initiatives considered to take forward and implement following feedback received from the GA community.
Michael MacDonald, Co-Head of the CAA’s General Aviation & RPAS Unit said:
“We have launched CAP 2408 Pilot Medical Declaration Review to explore the next phase of PMD and ask the GA community to consider how the system is working and help provide us with guidance on the development of the process and whether any changes need to be made.
“It is prudent for us as the regulator to review and consider changes where appropriate to policies in place.”
The consultation runs until midnight on Monday 5 December 2022.
Notes to Editors
- The Pilot Medical Declaration (PMD) system allows GA pilots, who only want to fly UK (G) registered aircraft in UK airspace to affirm their medical ‘fitness to fly’ and may be used to exercise the privileges of a qualifying pilot’s licence with certain conditions and limitation. Pilots can only use the PMD system if they believe they meet the medical requirements for a Group 1 (car) licence issued by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. More information is available here: Medical requirements for private pilots - LAPL | Civil Aviation Authority (caa.co.uk)
- CAP1284 (Public consultation: UK Private Pilot Licence and National Private Pilot Licence Medical Requirements) was released in June 2015 and resulted in 1,823 responses; one of the largest responses to a consultation we have ever seen.
- The response document published to this was CAP1397 (Comment Response Document: UK Private Pilot Licence and National Private Pilot Licence medical requirements) which goes into some detail on the areas the CAA wanted to take forward and implement. This document was published in May 2016.
- CAP 2146 UK (General Aviation opportunities after leaving EASA Comment Response Document) resulted in 46 initiatives that we wanted to take forward. One of those being a review of the PMD process in order to enhance the end user experience and identify opportunities in the context of the simplification and rationalisation of GA flight crew licensing.
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