Doctors' errors let unfit pilots into the cockpit

By SCOTT MacLEOD Transport reporter

The Government is rewriting aviation laws after a study found that our doctors make five times more errors than they would get away with in the United States.

A report released yesterday found that aviation doctors are making potentially disastrous errors when checking the health of New Zealand's 8500 pilots, including those who fly international airliners, and that 8 per cent are being wrongly passed as fit to fly.

But the Aviation Medical Society of Australia and New Zealand, which represents doctors criticised in the report, says the review is biased.

Professors Sir John Scott and Des Gorman checked the work of aviation doctors and found that they made mistakes during 55 per cent of their medical checks on pilots.

They included:

Medical reports showing pilots with better eyesight than they actually had.

Heart checks being cleared as normal when they were abnormal.

One assessor being unable to read an ECG heart Machine result.

Several pilots seen by one doctor receiving identical ECG reports.

The professors said some doctors failed to follow up on problems reported by many pilots, including renal colic, depression, deafness and heart, blood and kidney complaints.

The rate of errors was "unacceptably high," they said.

The report was requested last June by Civil Aviation Authority director Kevin Ward. It was released to coincide with yesterday's announcement of sweeping changes to medical procedures.

Under the present system, pilots go to approved private doctors called Designated Medical Examiners for health checks. Their reports are then checked by one of 27 CAA-approved Aviation Medical Assessors.

Transport Minister Mark Gosche yesterday announced a new bill making the CAA responsible for doctors.

Mr Gosche said independent experts would assess medical standards that have been vilified by the aviation industry, including a "1 per cent rule" which pilots claim strips too many people of licences.

His announcement came a week before seven groups claiming to represent the aviation industry take the CAA to court, partly out of anger with the 1 per cent rule.

The Aviation Medical Society president, Dr Rob Griffiths, said the CAA had commissioned the report to escape the judicial review, which would show that the authority had acted outside its own rules relating to medical fitness of pilots to fly.

He said the report's claims of poor practice by doctors compromising aviation safety were unfounded.