Everyone liked the EAA's way of notifying congressmen of the BMI bill so I contacted them about this bill and got this response.

Dear Phil,

Thank you for writing.
We do plan on using the Rally Congress tool for the 3rd class medical bill introduced today, but we plan on waiting until January because most Congressional staffers are going to be out of the office for the holidays, and we don’t want our members’ email to reach inboxes that are not being monitored. When we activate the tool, we will send an email to all EAA members urging their participation.
Thank you again for writing, and have a wonderful holiday season!

Thank you,

Jonathan Harger, EAA 63226
Government Advocacy Specialist
EAA- The Spirit of Aviation

Phone: 920.426.6103
Fax: 920.426.4885

www.eaa.org

I will be sure and post the link here when I get it.

Bout.
Dam.
Time.

Here's the bill...

http://www.aopa.org/-/media/Files/AOPA/ ... 24_xml.pdf

If this ever happens, we'll still need to make sure that the insurance companies don't impose their own medical requirement, or premium/ penalty for not having one. I'm thinking of the Avemco flier I just received about why insurance companies have stiffer minimum requirements than the FAA when it comes to flight hours.

-DP

Oh, yeah. This is such a great development. It may very well die in the house but it for sure sets the stage going forward. I just got the e-mail a moment ago and came to post the good news. I guess I'm not the only one stoked about this. I've posted it to Facebook and will likely tweet it too.

+1 here. Fingers crossed.

Gump

I've contacted my congressman and both my senators and asked them to sign on to the bill. For some reason I don't think the letter got through to Harry Reid's office. I'll have to try again later.

I'm sure somebody has already thought of this and run the numbers (AOPA, EAA?), but I'd love to see an analysis of all the potential economic benefits of this bill. Money talks in Washington DC, and it might be helpful to supply our non-aviator congressional delegations with facts and figures showing that this bill represents the possibility of a MAJOR economic infusion (flying lessons, airplanes, av gas, hangar rental, insurance, parts & maintenance, etc.) from a wealthy demographic (i.e., retired guys with money to spend, but who can't pass a medical), balanced against the negligible risk that one of those people will have his heart-attack in the sky, rather than in his 50-foot motor home while legally driving on 2-lane public roadways past school buses full of kids on the drive to the airport under his validly-issued driver's license.

I agree that this bill makes way too much sense for anyone in DC to actually pass it, but it might help to provide them with the numbers showing potential economic benefit versus negligible risk (as far as I know, they've never had a light sport pilot fall out of the sky for medical reasons).

It has been clear for many years that the FAA would be glad if all GA pilots would just go away, judging by the referenced EAA/AOPA bill that was never properly dealt with, and other issues. Perhaps we should have an FAA for 'oil burners' and let us take care of ourselves. We have been anyway-it would just be a lot easier and less expensive.

This is a far better proposal than the 180 hp limit of the Aopa/eaa concept.

If this passes I promise to take back 1 or 2 percent of the bad things I've said about the congress over the last 20 years.

The rest will stand.

macktruckfarm wrote:It has been clear for many years that the FAA would be glad if all GA pilots would just go away

Yeah, that explains why they recently created an entire new class of GA (LSA) that doesn't require a medical and still lets us fly random piles of metal we build in our garages (Experimental).

Here is a link to a site that allows you to write your reps! http://www.opencongress.org/bill/hr3708-113/show
If only they would do this and then also push the non commercial category together. That way they would really make a difference in GA.

piperpainter wrote:Here is a link to a site that allows you to write your reps! http://www.opencongress.org/bill/hr3708-113/show
If only they would do this and then also push the non commercial category together. That way they would really make a difference in GA.

Yup. Then, at the risk of putting the cart before the horse, expand it to include current Class 3 IFR operations.

I'm highly supportive of doing things stepwise. If this is the battle that can be won today, I'm good with waiting and adding IFR later.

I'm curious if anybody else is wondering what has happened with this. The talk at the time this was going around was, wait until January when Congress is back in session. Now we have been hearing nothing about it. Is this still alive, or are the powers that be using the myopic nature of the American public including pilots against us?

Marty

I'm sure everyone else just received the email from Mark Baker requesting contributions for the fight to get HR 3078 passed. Before I kick a few dollars to AOPA for "the fight," what are they actually going to do? Was the House bill their initiative or was it another group? Will AOPA run more ads in their magazine preaching to the choir? Are they going to buy an ad in the New York Times? Where does this money go?

I'm totally behind this business of getting rid of the 3rd class medical, but in my opinion our greatest obstacle is the perception that it has a measurable contribution to safety. I even read other pilots frequently advocating for the 3rd class. This thing doesn't have a chance in hell if other pilots are buying into that BS. 10 years of Sport Pilot certificate I think has proven something with its lack of significant data on medically attributed crashes.

So how is our voice actually advocated? Once it's through committee, we can each write individually to our congresspeople, the people who will actually be casting the vote. Prior to that though, showing full support of the House GA caucus members on this bill and being very outspoken.

Although... it seems like there could be a strategy to this too. If it becomes a newsworthy topic, it's sure to be misunderstood by news organizations and laypeople, causing a backlash from the public who thinks a hemorrhoid exam will prevent me, the unpaid pleasure-seeking pilot, from spinning into their neighborhood. Perhaps targeted letters of support to the GA caucus members is best at this time.

Thoughts?

HR 3708 is currently in subcommittee, you can follow it here.

I have not yet had an opportunity to review this AOPA push yet. So with that in mind here are a couple of my thoughts at this juncture:

1. The FAA apology came about solely because of the push to eliminate 3rd class medicals for most VFR flying. Had that not happened they would have continued stonewalling any changes we wished to see, and circumventing the law to push through policies that they want and know wouldn't stand the light of day.

If for no other reason then to lessen their self appointed dictatorial power, I for one am going to strongly push for the elimination of 3rd class medicals. To do anything less just feeds their Narcissistic Napoleon complex and will make them increasingly difficult to deal with in the future. Long ago they forgot they work for us, and exist to support us.

2. Without the Obama administration throwing lots of money at a public relations campaign touting how airplanes will be falling out of the sky if 3rd class medicals are eliminated, I just don't see John Q Public caring about this at all, either way.

Barnstormer wrote:2. Without the Obama administration throwing lots of money at a public relations campaign touting how airplanes will be falling out of the sky if 3rd class medicals are eliminated, I just don't see John Q Public caring about this at all, either way.

I think the White House will be indifferent. I think public backlash would be a purely network news hype thing. News is a business and scary headlines keep advertisers paying their bills. So, the first news story that starts with "amateur pilots are trying to do away with an important safety measure that could end up with your family dead and your house on fire: Story at 11" will probably cause problems for this bill.

The FAA Aeromedical Division admits they are overburdened and understaffed, hopefully this bill passing into law will lighten their load.

I'll sign petitions but I don't have one dime to throw anyone's way.