Pilot Incapacitation Update

You can skip this eleven and a half minute video and read the transcript below.

I’m Kevin Stillwagon, vice president of USFreedomFlyers.org, an FAA watchdog organization focused right now on pilot health, medical standards, and the reporting of these issues so we can keep flying safe.

The official mission statement of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is: “Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.” Well, to keep it safe, FAA, you need to identify trends that could compromise safety, and then you intervene by changing rules or policies to prevent an accident. So, it’s all about data collection, analysis, and looking for trends that could affect safety. When it comes to collecting and analyzing data on pilot health and the tracking of pilot incapacitations, the FAA is failing miserably. Here’s what I mean:

There is a centralized database called the Pilot Incapacitation Data Registry held at the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute division of the FAA. The database is used to look for trends in pilot incapacitations that can be tied to pre-existing medical conditions and track cardiac related incidents and deaths that occur while flying. Studies using the database have been done in the past, notably one titled “In-flight medical incapacitation and impairment of airline pilots” that compiled data from 1993 to 1998 and was published in 2004. Another was titled “Cardiac inflight incapacitations of US airline pilots” that used data from 1995 to 2015, and was published in 2018.

The first study identified three events where the incapacitated pilot had a seizure that put an unexpected flight control input into the aircraft causing temporary loss of control that the other pilot could not immediately overcome. In all three cases, the seized pilot applied full rudder input with a locked leg, requiring the other pilot to move the seized pilot’s seat aft and away from the rudder pedals. This does require considerable effort by the other pilot because the autopilot will automatically disengage, and he or she will need both hands to get the seized pilot off the controls. I’ve been saying for the past few years that if we do lose an aircraft due to a pilot incapacitation, it will be a seizure with an unexpected rudder input that happens at a critical phase of flight either on the ground or close to the ground. We will not lose an aircraft due to one of the pilots losing consciousness or becoming incapacitated for any medical reason unless a seizure with an unexpected flight control input is involved, in my opinion.

The second study was specifically looking at cardiac events. Their conclusion was that current aeromedical certification methods are insufficient to predict inflight cardiac events, and identifying pilots at risk remains challenging. That was in 2018. Trying to identify risks is even more critical now, because starting in December of 2020, airline pilots were forced to get injected with a product that causes subclinical myocarditis and has been tied to cerebrovascular events including seizures, even several years after the injections. Additionally, the FAA does not keep a record of who got what shots and when they got them. It’s almost like they don’t even want to know. How can you even begin to predict inflight cardiac events and identify pilots at risk for seizures if you don’t have a baseline record of injection history? That’s a serious data gap that needs to be rectified immediately.

But it gets even worse. Shockingly, the FAA stopped entering data into the incapacitation data registry very early in the year 2021 and completely cancelled the program in 2022. Subsequently, the terminated database has become a public record that you can download into a Microsoft excel spreadsheet at this link.

If you take the time to do that, you’ll see that there was an average of about 33 airline pilot incapacitations per year from 2016 to 2020, but only 2 airline (FAA part 121) incapacitations exist in the database for the year 2021. One was a male age 63 who died with no cause of death listed, and no autopsy, which makes me suspect this public spreadsheet has redacted field entries. But, if in fact there were no autopsies, that is negligence at this point. Because we know for sure that the proteins coded for by the mRNA in the shots are found in tissues related to the cause of death. Every unexpected death of a crewmember should be investigated for the presence of vaccine specific proteins in tissues.

Clearly, either something happened early in 2021 that they don’t want us to know, or the database was terminated for some other reason. I filed a FOIA request to find out why, including all internal emails discussing the matter. I wanted to wait for their answer before writing this substack, but due to the government shutdown, it might be significantly delayed. When I do hear something, I will write another substack on what I found.

Some data is still being collected by the FAA and exists in the Air Safety Information and Sharing System, abbreviated ASIAS, in a section called the Accident and Incident Data System, abbreviated AIDS. The complete database is only available to FAA employees or contractors to the FAA. I have asked for unrestricted access to do a research project, like what’s been done in the past, so we’ll see where that goes. Some of the ASIAS AIDS data is available to the public at this link, but it is unorganized, redacted and not complete.

So, I searched that public ASIAS database to look for pilot incapacitations starting in 2021 where aircraft control was lost in commercial jet aircraft. There was one I found that occurred on an American Airlines partner flight operated by PSA airlines flight 5069 on August 7, 2022 in this very jet, N609NN. It was a Canadair Regional Jet that departed Allentown, PA at about 6AM, headed for Charlotte NC. Descending on the approach into Charlotte at about 7:17AM, the captain, who was the flying pilot, suffered a seizure between 4000 feet and 3000 feet. The narrative states, THE FIRST OFFICER STRUGGLED FOR RUDDER CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT AS THE CAPTAIN’S LEFT FOOT WAS STUCK ON THE RUDDER PEDAL. AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL ASSIGNED A NEW ALTITUDE OF 4000 FEET; THE FIRST OFFICER COMPLIED WITH THE INSTRUCTION WHILE PULLING THE CAPTAINS’S SEAT BACK TO REGAIN RUDDER CONTROL. Later, IN THE DESCENT, THE CAPTAIN BECAME CONSCIOUS BUT CONFUSED. THE FIRST OFFICER WAS REPEATEDLY FORCED TO PREVENT THE CA FROM INTERFERING WITH THE CONTROLS AND THE RADIOS.

Obviously, incapacitation events that involve seizures are a significant threat to flight safety, and something that we need to risk stratify pilots for, in addition to risk stratification for cardiac events. Since seizures are a known adverse reaction to the covid mRNA shots, a good place to start would be vaccination history tracking using the electronic system already in use by pilots. From an IT perspective that would be easy, but from a legal/regulatory aspect it would take a couple of years due to the bureaucratic process.

Even having the FAA revise its policy guidance in the Guide for Aviation Medical Examiners to recommend simple blood tests would take a long time. So, I recommend anyone who got even one of these shots to be proactive. Due to long lasting vascular impacts of an mRNA injection, you could be at risk whether you have symptoms or not. Go online yourself without a doctor being involved and get laboratory screening for markers of coagulation or inflammation, including D-dimer, BNP, Galectin-3, and a measurement of vaccine induced spike protein antibody levels. If any are abnormal, or the antibody levels are significantly elevated, visit the Resources tab on USFreedomFlyers.org and find a clinic or doctor for protocols.

Another approach would be neurological cognition baseline testing and follow-ups. This would have pilots and air traffic controllers take a 15-min computerized attention & reaction-time battery every 6 months. Software would track their reaction times, error rates, and lapses over multiple sessions. Trend analysis would flag pilots and air traffic controllers showing progressive slowing or variability, prompting further investigation.

Some Air Traffic Control and military aviation programs already use reaction-time and vigilance tests to monitor fatigue or central nervous system function. Some commercial airlines use limited cognitive assessment mostly in initial hiring or post-incident investigation, not as routine ongoing monitoring. The FAA has not implemented these as standard seizure-risk surveillance tools, but all the technology exists, and they need to consider it to keep flying safe.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for staying smart.