Major Airline F.O. Medical requirements...

[Beechnut]

The airline I work for just added the requirement for all FOs to keep a 1st Class medical. We are told that this keeps us in line with ICAO requirements. Are FOs required to maintain a 1st Class medical at your airline? What happens to FOs that can't hold a 1st Class but can hold a 2nd Class?

Thanks,

S.

 

[Sandhawk]

The airline I work for just added the requirement for all FOs to keep a 1st Class medical. We are told that this keeps us in line with ICAO requirements. Are FOs required to maintain a 1st Class medical at your airline? What happens to FOs that can't hold a 1st Class but can hold a 2nd Class?

Thanks,

S.

FYI - An FAA 1st Class AND 2nd Class Medical are both equivalent to the ICAO First Class Medical

 

[HAL]

Yes, we're required at HA to have a 1st class medical. Those few that can't hold it simply keep a 2nd class, but I think there's restrictions of flying international with just the 2nd class.

HAL

 

[MILPILOT17]

SWA FO's only need a 2nd class after initial hire training.

 

[Scope out RJ's]

SWA FO's only need a 2nd class after initial hire training.

Yeah, the only requirement is for swa f/o's to buy their job.:laugh:

 

[shootr]

What's you have for lunch, Scope? I had a steak burrito at Moe's. Mmmm!

 

[propilot]

deleted

 

[densoo]

FYI - An FAA 1st Class AND 2nd Class Medical are both equivalent to the ICAO First Class Medical

I'm not so sure about that. All our FOs are type-rated in the plane and can therefore act as IROs for CAs (I don't agree with it, but the FAA approved it).

A couple of years ago the French aviation authorities did a check of the crew's medicals and ruled that it was illegal for our FOs to operate as an IRO to a CA their country with only a 2nd Class since the IRO (or the FO, take your pick--they're interchangeable) is acting as a CA when the only CA is out of his seat for rest, and the CA, according to our rules, must have a 1st Class. It was an odd situation because it appears that the French were requiring us to abide by our own rules since we were not doing so. Since that time all of our FOs had to have 1st Class medicals.

Strange that the FAA never required it when we started doing the FO equals a CA for IRO purposes, but at no other time. We've been doing it since 1998. There's a bit of a wink wink, nudge nudge, thing going on with the whole issue. How can an FO be an IRO to CA when he hasn't gone through CA upgrade training. Three times in the last five years a CA has lost their medical inflight. The most recent incidient highlighted the technical problem. The IRO came up and the two FOs flew to landing. Not an operational problem, but certainly a technical one. Techinically, neither pilot had been through CA upgrade and yet one of them is now the CA. The company was able to carefully keep it from the media by just referring to the relief pilot on board, and no one caught on the two FOs were flying the plane. Again not a big deal to us, but the media would have had a field day if they found out that two "co-pilots" were the only ones in charge of a plane over the Atlantic.

BY MATT LYSIAK, JOE KEMP AND LARRY MCSHANE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Thursday, June 18, 2009

A Continental Airlines pilot died of an apparent midflight heart attack Thursday despite desperate resuscitation efforts in the cockpit 36,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean.

Cardiologist Julien Struyven, a passenger aboard Flight 61 from Brussels, called for the onboard defibrillator after finding the pilot unresponsive and tilted back in the captain's seat.

"I tried to revive him, but he wouldn't come back," said Struyven, 72, adding that the pilot likely suffered a heart attack. "It was too late. He had passed."

With the dead pilot in the front of the plane, the co-pilot - with the help of a second relief pilot - landed the Boeing 777 safely at Newark Airport.
Most of the 247 passengers were unaware of the cockpit tragedy until after the plane touched down at 11:40 a.m., about six hours after the pilot's death.

 

[Jim]

Yes, we're required at HA to have a 1st class medical. Those few that can't hold it simply keep a 2nd class, but I think there's restrictions of flying international with just the 2nd class.

HAL

If you don't get the type rating during training, you aren't required to have a 1st class. It's only required to fly IRO, FO can fly international on 2nd class.

 

[densoo]

If you don't get the type rating during training, you aren't required to have a 1st class. It's only required to fly IRO, FO can fly international on 2nd class.

Agree.