Getting hired with a S.O.D.A.

[cws]

Shuttle America hired me with a color vision SODA.

 

[cws]

Shuttle America hired me with a color vision SODA.

 

[cws]

Shuttle America hires people with SODA's

 

[11thHour]

Horizon took me with a color vision SODA, with full knowledge that I had one.

 

[AEpilot876]

Does anyone know if some of the majors, like Southwest will hire you with a SODA?

 

[dash8driver]

yes but BEER would probably win you more friends...

actually i dont think they can deny you based on your medical. if you have a 1st class, you are medically qualified to fly for them. lawsuits have been won because of airlines trying that. one of the more recent is a guy with, believe it or not, ONE eye. yet he held a 1st class medical, they denied him becaue he only had one eye, and now he's 1.7 mil richer.

so if you get denied because of a SODA, your letter will probably give some other reason.

 

[chuychanga]

I work at Coex with a SODA for colorblindness. I was just hired in February. I told them at the interview and they said it was no big deal. They never asked about it again.

I was also offered jobs at Eagle (I told them at the physical, again, they said no big deal) and TransStates.

 

[English]

I work at Coex with a SODA for colorblindness. I was just hired in February. I told them at the interview and they said it was no big deal. They never asked about it again.

I was also offered jobs at Eagle (I told them at the physical, again, they said no big deal) and TransStates.

I'm glad to hear that CoEx changed their discriminatory practices that were in place in 2001.

 

[craphauler]

Could a colorblind person see this light?

Northern Lights,

As a fellow color deficient pilot who has been laughed at by the nurse when I went for my first aviation medical I feel your pain. After leafing through several pages, missing about one in three of the pseudoisochromatic plates (dot test) in a gigantic book which was thrown in my lap, I was told I might want to consider a different career path and given a medical which stated "NOT VALID FOR NIGHT FLYING OR BY SIGNAL CONTROL" but not to despair I could always try and apply for a waiver or a SODA.

Incensed by this callous display of ignorance and insensitivey, and confused but unshaken in my knowledge that I did see color and could tell the difference between red, green and every other important color of the God**CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED** rainbow I began a quest for a first class unrestricted medical. Along the way I learned a little but mainly I learned there is alot of ignorance and misunderstanding about this topic in the population at large, the aviation community and even the FAA aeromedical community, especially AME's. I will try to shed some light.

First of all you are not color blind, (you do see colors right?) You are color deficient or color weak and that weakness is exactly what the pseudoisochromatic plates (dot test) are designed to detect, any weakness in color discrimination whatsoever. Your eye conatains three seperate types of cones designed to sense color, each type of cone being responsible for a certain range of visible light frequencies; or approxiatemately red, green, and blue. The dot test deliberately attempts to confuse the eye by picking colors from the "confusion zone" or oddball colors between the frequencies of the 3 receptor cones that stimulate multiple cones at once, Ex. an offkey peagreen yellow might be confused with a weird orange in a mildly color defiecent person by stimulating frequencies on the edge of all three receptors. So its not really a straight forward test, no one would design a color coded information system so deliberately tricky for an airplane cockpit. Secondly, color is not an absolute, it is a completely subjective and individual experience for everyone, so it is very hard to say what is normal and what is "defective". Its like trying to standardize what a normal shrimp should taste like.

With that out of the way I hate to break it to you but a SODA is a waiver, and 328 Dude is in denial. A SODA is a statement of demonstrated ability, in other words it is documenting the fact that an applicant does not meet the medical standards set forth by the FAA but the applicant has found ways to cope with his/her disability and perform the necessary flight duties anyway. I mean read your own SODA; "physical defects: defective color vision" The FAA is waiving their own standards for color vision [FAR 67.103(c) 67.203(c) 67.303(c)]because you have "demonstrated the ability to perform color vision tasks appropriate to the certificate for which applied". Color vision tasks, not acceptable color vision.

Wings 421 is right on. A 'letter of competence' however documents the fact that you do meet the FAA's standards for color vision and also states that you will not ever again have to take another dot test for an FAA medical as long as you are otherwise qualified. You are issued a normal First Class medical without restriction and no one will ever know about your little dot problem besides your AME unless you tell them OR they decide to color test you prehire in which case we are probably both screwed.

I don't think it matters much either way, but I like having my letter of competence because I never have to apologize or explain at an interview and if I ever do have to take a prehire eye exam, and if I can't pass on my own, then and only then will I tell them about my letter and hopefully it will help my argument that 'my eyes are fine its your **CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED** test that's busted.'

As for how to get that letter of comp, I dunno. I wasn't smart enough to get one on my own so I paid Dr. Richard Monaco and Virtual Flight Surgeons a buttload of money to get one for me. (Pricy but worth it, nice very professional people) After I passed a rigorous and very well documented eye exam including one of the approved alternate color vision tests with Dr. Monaco, who forwarded the results to VFS for processing with the Feds, I recieved a faxed copy of my letter about a week later. By the way VFS has an excellent section on their site concerning color vision standards and the FAA, including a nice sales pitch for the LOC vs. SODA
www.aviationmedicine.com/colorvision.htm

Good Luck to all, PM me if I can help.