Who will hire me with a SODA?

[pilot773]

I have a dumb question. What exactly is a SODA?

 

[Andy Neill]

Sec. 67.401(b) provides for a Statement of Demonstrated Ability (SODA) instead of an Authorization. A SODA will be issued without expiration date to applicants whose disqualifying conditions are static or nonprogressive and who have been found capable of performing airman duties without endangering public safety. A SODA authorizes an aviation medical examiner to issue a medical certificate if the condition is unchanged and the applicant is otherwise eligible.

 

[asolo]

Hey all, Thanks for all the responses. Eaglefly is correct about my condition. Amblyopia (what I've read and heard) is correctable if you catch it early enough, but I'll try the exercises. I hope working for a regional is close in my future!

Blue Skies
Asolo

 

[Snakum]

Just as an aside .... I read somewhere a couple years ago that American hired an FO a few years back with only one eye. Don't know if it's true, but the article listed his name and the circumstances (which I don't remember).

Minh
(Has both eyes ... but doesn't hear well.)

 

[Andy Neill]

The following is a website that give a list of cases where monocular vision was the issue.

http://reason.com/9807/col.olson.shtml

In most cases, the single-eyed plaintiff won. An exception (at least a temporary one) was the case of the airline pilot:


"Last October--you might want to remain seated for this one---the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit gave the go-ahead to a lawsuit under Hawaii state disabled-rights law against Aloha Islandair, a passenger airline, for declining to hire a pilot with vision in only one eye. The decision was based on relatively narrow legal grounds, overturning a lower court opinion which had found that federal aviation laws preempted the right to file such suits under state law.

"Significantly, however, the appellate court dropped some broad hints that it expected the complainant to win when he got back to state court, the reason being that the Federal Aviation Administration has not banned persons with monocular vision from flying planes--and so long as it hasn't, the court suggested, airlines shouldn't imagine that they can institute such hiring criteria on their own."