Eye sugery and military flying

[Please Hire Me]

If applying for UPT and one has had corrective eye surgery, can they still get the job? How would they find out?

 

[ExAF]

SOL

I'm pretty sure, but not positive, if you've had corrective surgery, you will not be accepted into SUPT. Call your local recruiter to get the real answer. All they would have to do to find out is not be dead when they look into your eyes during your flight physical.

 

[FamilyMan]

Not true,
Two of my friends I work with in the Air Force who have had eye surgery. Here’s an article from the Local Colorado Springs newspaper about the Air Force Academy and the surgery. GOOD LUCK! I’m getting on the waiting list this week.

Family Man

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Ignore the formatting, the text didn’t cut and paste very well.

By JOHN DIEDRICH THE GAZETTE

As a boy, Daniel Florence rode by the academy on family trips down Interstate 25, dreaming one day he would fly jets for the Air Force.
Florence, who grew up in Littleton, learned his weak eyesight spiked any chance of landing a pilot slot.
He wasn’t alone. The top reason to be disqualified from flying at the academy is poor eyesight.
Florence now has a chance to fly.
An academy doctor performed corrective eye surgery on him and 24 other cadets in September and October. It was the first time the Air Force has done the procedure on cadets.
The cadets are recovering and will get eye exams next year. If their eyesight passes Air Force standards, they could get pilot slots.
"I knew I had zero percent chance of flying. Now it’s 50 percent," said Florence, 21.
"I think about (flying) all the time. I won’t let myself go down that road and say I am going to be a pilot because I will be really disappointed if I don’t."
The academy is the biggest pipeline of Air Force pilots, providing about 540 a year.
The eye surgery program helps that mission.
"What we are doing is increasing the pool of pilots," said Col. Mark Welter, flight commander for cadet medicine.
"There are a lot of very good cadets who just have been endowed with bad eyes."
Although corrective eye surgery has been common among civilians for several years, the Air Force has taken a conservative approach. The service doesn’t want to take chances with so much riding on pilots’ eyes.
Although the Air Force is allowing the surgery, there are limits. Rules say no more than 10 percent of pilots coming from each source of officers can have the surgery. At the academy, that means no more than about 54 cadets can have the surgery and get pilot slots.
The Air Force only allows Photorefractive Keratectomy surgery, or PRK, which changes the shape of the cornea to improve the way the eye focuses light.
The Air Force is not allowing LASIK or Laser in-Situ Keratomileusis surgery, in which a flap of the cornea is cut and then the laser changes the shape below that flap. LASIK is less painful, but the Air Force considers it experimental. Officials fear the gravitational pull of a jet could bring up the flap, blurring the pilot’s vision.
Cadets hungry to fly have gotten PRK surgery off base at their own expense. The results weren’t always good. The cadets were declared to have 20/20 vision by civilian doctors, but the Air Force rejected about 40 percent of them because they couldn’t see well at night or in fog.
The Air Force figured the cadets needed better follow-up after surgery, which would happen if the procedure was done at the academy.
Cadets must see a doctor eight times after the surgery, use eye drops several times a day and wear sunglasses outside for a year.
"We said, ‘Let’s bring these cadets back into our health care system because there is better accountability,’ " Welter said.
The academy began the program last summer by looking at medical records for the class of 2004, whose members now are juniors, and identifying the 120 cadets whose eyes were bad enough to qualify for surgery. Officials picked juniors because they committed to serve in the Air Force but had enough time at the academy to recover.
The academy cut the group down to 40 by asking cadets whether they wanted to fly and figuring out whether they had other disqualifying problems.
The first group had surgery in September.
Cadet Cynthia Coffee was in the group. Coffee’s eyes were so bad she couldn’t see the 7-inch-high "E" on the chart. She had made peace with the fact she wouldn’t fly for the Air Force.
The surgery changed that. "It was awesome. Incredible," the 23-year-old said. "It’s so nice to be able to see now, and I have the chance to fly."

 

[kelleyadai]

Okay...new AirForce policy..see link. Waivers are granted to PRK, although you have to pay for it. Most UPT units give eye tests before interviews, but if you get the interview, I would be well studied on this policy. You basically have to be "healed" 3-6 months before you start training.

http://www.tyndall.af.mil/325MDG/PRK_Aviation/Table_contents.htm

Navy policy is:

http://navymedicine.med.navy.mil/PRK/refractive_surgery_information.htm

In case you want to fly off boats...at least check out the site, it does a great job of explaining the different types of surgery.

I have a lot of friends RIO-Pilot transitions who have recieved the surgery via the Navy and are very happy with it, with no side effects.

Also, I teach ROTC right now and we have had 2 students get it at civilian doctors and have no complications either.