[yeowMeng]

Not sure this will be helpful but here goes.

I wanted to be a pilot but am tall (> 6 feet) and poor eye sight (< -10).

I was told at a young age that it would be nearly impossible for me. I accepted my fate for better or worse. Yet you have a better chance than me. Hard to say if it’s worth pursuing.

Nevertheless, I sympathize with you because people can make big mistakes and learn from it but the categorization and stigma remains.

Best of luck to you.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

I’m curious how these aspects are not considered discriminatory - eyesight is commonly fixed by glasses and height is fixed by not squeezing every last dollar out of floorspace - which I would compare to wheelchair accessible buildings (acknowledging the latter is typically more restrictive due to scale).

I’m not trying to go woke here, there are disabilities that prevent performing certain tasks such as flying (total blindness or colour blindness) but there are others which are easily worked around.

[sokoloff]

Corrected vision is not disqualifying for even first class medicals (what’s needed to fly for an airline).

Height or correctable vision can still be disqualifying for military aviators (my vision was disqualifying from flying pointy military jets at the time and might still be).

[genocidicbunny]

In many airplanes, there are legitimate restrictions on how tall you can be as a pilot -- there simply isn't enough room up there for taller pilots to fit.

As for eyesight, I'd imagine it's for the case when the pilot loses/breaks/forgets their glasses. You don't want a pilot who suddenly can't see in midair.

[everforward]

> In many airplanes, there are legitimate restrictions on how tall you can be as a pilot -- there simply isn't enough room up there for taller pilots to fit.

Right, but they were designed that way. It was likely known at design time that there was a maximum height.

Standard bathroom stalls won't fit wheelchairs, but that doesn't absolve companies from a duty to provide ones that are.

There are obviously different physical constraints here than bathrooms, but I'd be surprised if there was a physical constraint limiting this.

As for the eyesight, this strikes me as the kind of things copilots and backup glasses are for. Require every pilot with glasses to carry a backup pair in their shirt pocket. Or maybe contacts in and a pair of glasses (turbulence may be an issue with glasses).

I'd be curious if they're equally cautious with people who are diabetic or have cardiac risk factors.

[genocidicbunny]

> Right, but they were designed that way. It was likely known at design time that there was a maximum height.

Airplane cockpits aren't built the way they are for shiggles. Pilots need to be able to reach controls, and if you design a cockpit for fitting people over 6ft tall, it might become unergonomic, if not downright dangerous for shorter pilots. There are actual safety issues at play here.

Similar for eyesight -- yes they can carry a backup, until they forget it. The safest thing is to require pilots to have adequate uncorrected vision, though some are loosening that to allow lenses. Do you want to fly on an airplane where there's a nonzero chance the pilot is effectively incapacitated because he forgot his glasses?

> I'd be curious if they're equally cautious with people who are diabetic or have cardiac risk factors.

To different degrees, but yes, they are. Some airlines will require their pilots to get regular medical checkups.

[everforward]

> Airplane cockpits aren't built the way they are for shiggles. Pilots need to be able to reach controls, and if you design a cockpit for fitting people over 6ft tall, it might become unergonomic, if not downright dangerous for shorter pilots. There are actual safety issues at play here.

If they can build a thin metal tube that can safely ascend and descend 30k feet, I'm pretty sure they can build controls that are ergonomic for people outside of a 6" height span. Of all the issues airplane engineers face, I refuse to believe that adjustable controls are the one hill they can't conquer.

> Similar for eyesight -- yes they can carry a backup, until they forget it.

This is how practically every part of the plane is. There are redundant parts, until maintenance forgets about it. Except here there's a redundancy of a redundancy; the copilot can take over if the other pilot forgot their backup glasses and their contacts broke or whatever.

Just put it on the pre-flight checklist. If it's good enough for the mechanical parts, it should be good enough for an already-redundant piece of human equipment.

> Do you want to fly on an airplane where there's a nonzero chance the pilot is effectively incapacitated because he forgot his glasses?

Every flight you get on has a non-zero chance of a pilot being incapacitated. That's why there are two. Heart attacks, sudden onset of a seizure disorder, bad medication interactions, etc, etc. There are dozens of reasons why a pilot could be incapacitated mid-air.

If my options are a pilot with glasses or a pilot with high blood pressure, I'm taking the glasses. An effectively blind pilot doesn't cause a distraction, and could be helpful to their copilot (doing radio comms, talking to passengers, maybe watching a gauge or two if they squint). A pilot in cardiac arrest is both incapable of helping and distracting.

I wouldn't worry that much about a pilot with glasses. The glasses are unlikely to spontaneously break, if they do they should have backups, if they don't have backups then the copilot takes over like anything else that incapacitates a pilot. Hell, if it really came down to the wire, there's probably a decent chance that one of the passengers on the plane has a prescription close enough to make a shoddy landing.

[genocidicbunny]

> If they can build a thin metal tube that can safely ascend and descend 30k feet, I'm pretty sure they can build controls that are ergonomic for people outside of a 6" height span. Of all the issues airplane engineers face, I refuse to believe that adjustable controls are the one hill they can't conquer.

How many accidents have there been before we figured out the edge cases with doing this? How many planes _still_ crash due to metal fatigue from pressurization cycles? How many souls are you willing to sacrifice for adjustable controls?

> This is how practically every part of the plane is. There are redundant parts, until maintenance forgets about it.

And just like when maintenance forgets it and there's an incident, it's a big deal. Why accept that risk when there's an easy way to avoid it, especially with potentially hundreds of souls onboard?

> Except here there's a redundancy of a redundancy; the copilot can take over if the other pilot forgot their backup glasses and their contacts broke or whatever.

A copilot is not a redundancy, they're a partial backup. Usually the pilot/copilot split responsibilities. If you push all that onto one person, there are some tasks that they will be less efficient at, if not incapable of performing at all. Yes, most modern airlines can probably be successfully flown by just one pilot, but that pilot is going to have an increased cognitive load to deal with which may reduce their efficiency. In an emergency situation, this can especially be dangerous.

The mantra is "aviate, navigate, communicate" -- when those are split up between two pilots, all three can be accomplished at the same time. When you only have one pilot, something ends up suffering. Hopefully it's just the 'communicate' aspect, but we know in reality it's most often all three that suffer.

Plus the copilot is a human too. Most humans will be a little distracted if the guy they were were working with for the last few hours suddenly died or had a debilitating injury next to them.

> Just put it on the pre-flight checklist. If it's good enough for the mechanical parts, it should be good enough for an already-redundant piece of human equipment.

You'd also need to ensure that the glasses are in good working order, are still the correct prescription..etc. It would not be as simple as 'make sure pilot has extra pair of glasses'.

> If my options are a pilot with glasses or a pilot with high blood pressure, I'm taking the glasses. An effectively blind pilot doesn't cause a distraction, and could be helpful to their copilot (doing radio comms, talking to passengers, maybe watching a gauge or two if they squint). A pilot in cardiac arrest is both incapable of helping and distracting.

Which is incidentally why a lot of pilots are checked for the latter as well. Airlines definitely do require physical checkups for pilots, and that includes cardiovascular health.

> I wouldn't worry that much about a pilot with glasses. The glasses are unlikely to spontaneously break, if they do they should have backups, if they don't have backups then the copilot takes over like anything else that incapacitates a pilot. Hell, if it really came down to the wire, there's probably a decent chance that one of the passengers on the plane has a prescription close enough to make a shoddy landing.

Many, many aviation safety regulations are for edge cases that were written and proved in blood. You do not want your aviation safety regulations to be the equivalent of an italian mechanic going "itsa good!"

[jacinda]

I don't know about Type II but Type I can be extremely limiting. A friend's spouse was diagnosed somewhere between 9 and 12 and it completely ended their dream of becoming a military aviator (also hoped to be an astronaut).

They now work at NASA but have had to fight tooth and nail to go on longer expeditions related to search and rescue and it's really only the advent of CGM that have made it possible, to be honest.

Found this as well after a quick Google search; the first medical approval of someone with Type 1 Diabetes by the FAA was 2020: https://beyondtype1.org/commercial-pilot-diabetes/

[lolc]

Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read. As a T1 I'd say this disease should bar you from a license to fly passengers. An emergency situation in the air can go on for hours, and you don't want diabetes creating extra issues. The pilot has an additional "aviate navigate communicate" thread running but for their diabetes.

On the other hand, I do tell people that a well managed diabetes still lets you do most anything, so I'll reflect on the commercial flying where I think one shouldn't.

[ffgjgf1]

> As for the eyesight, this strikes me as the kind of things copilots and backup glasses are for.

Why take any unnecessary risks at all? If you can’t have your eyesight repaired surgical well… tough luck there are many other careers you can pursue.

> they're equally cautious with people who are diabetic or have cardiac risk factors

Yes of course they are. Which again seems perfectly reasonable

[lolinder]

> there simply isn't enough room up there for taller pilots to fit.

Under the ADA "there simply isn't a wheelchair ramp up to our building" isn't a legitimate restriction on hiring someone who uses a wheelchair—you put a wheelchair ramp in.

OP's point is that arguably the same should apply to other traits like height. The space constraints are somewhat arbitrary and could be remedied.

[genocidicbunny]

That's not correct. The ADA requires reasonable accommodation, not accommodation at all costs. So yes, "there simply isn't a wheelchair ramp up to our building" is not legitimate, but "there simply isn't a wheelchair ramp up to our building and it would be prohibitively expensive or impossible to change that" does work.

[Dylan16807]

But if you keep getting new buildings made for you where it would be straightforward to build in but prohibitively expensive after the fact...

[bluGill]

The ADA doesn't allow new buildings to not comply, unless the job itself couldn't be done. Thus the roof can be not accessable, but only maintanence goes there and job has many parts that cannot be done in a wheelchair

[genocidicbunny]

Which is irrelevant to the discussion for the most part.

[Dylan16807]

That's not a legitimate reason for airlines. They keep ordering cockpits without an extra couple inches on purpose.

And there's a ton of ways a pilot can become incapacitated. Having an extra pair of glasses is one of the easiest mitigations around, if the odds are actually that bad.

[kortilla]

They don’t order cockpits. That’s not how the industry works.

It’s also not about “enough space” in the entire cockpit, it’s about the layouts of all of the controls and being able to reach them.

“Extra pair of glasses” is not a solution in severe turbulence where the plane drops 100ft in 1 second.

[Dylan16807]

Planes can be customized, and the baseline design is based on what the majority of airlines want.

It's the fault of airlines. Nitpicking is fine if you want to add more details but doesn't change that.

And taller people on average can reach more controls, not less.

For glasses, how often does that make them come off compared to any other random reason for incapacitation? And what if there's a strap trying to keep them on? Acting like this is the only risk factor in isolation is bad.

[mlyle]

There's plenty of scope for customization, but generally not in changing the shape of the cockpit.

Airliners are good at fitting 99%+ of the population well. But, in the end, airliner cockpits have switches and indicators up "high" and stuff down low that has to be easily within reach, but also not crowd your movement. There's a lot of adjustability, but adjustability (seat rails, etc) has been causes of accidents.

If you're within 5'2 to 6'3, odds are you can easily clamber in, fit, reach all the controls. That's all that's required. Even if you're outside of that range it might be OK (there is a 4'11 787 captain out there...)

As to glasses, there's no problem with having poor vision if it can be corrected with lenses. Aviation is not perfectly inclusive or accommodating of every disability, but it's not needlessly restrictive, either.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Just because it was built that way doesn’t mean it’s not discriminatory. An aircraft being half a foot larger wouldn’t have been a big deal if they were built to accomodate tall people in the first place. 6’2 is not an uncommon height.

[schmidp]

I am 6’4 and I am baffled by that argument. Not being “discriminatory” against pilot height is not the most important design choice in an airplane. What about a 7 feet tall person? Would it also be “discriminatory” if they can’t be a pilot?

[Dylan16807]

How difficult is an extra foot? People only get so tall.

But there is a pretty big difference between accommodating 93 percentile for men and 99.96 percentile, and that's only 5 inches in height between 6'1" and 6'6".

[dividedbyzero]

I think if you're in the 99.96 percentile for low height in women, that additional foot would be pretty difficult. You'd have a very hard time reaching all of the controls, and it's not like you can stand up to do so.

[genocidicbunny]

Half a foot larger in what way? Length won't help much. Height? Then you're adding _a lot_ of additional weight because you have to increase the radius of the fuselage.

[Dylan16807]

Big commercial planes do not have their radius defined by the seats and controls in the cockpit. It would not need to increase.

[hsbauauvhabzb]

Or you shift the cockpit back

[a_gnostic]

The Army will still let you fly helicopters if you're too tall for the Airforce.

[fragmede]

eyesight for pilots is commonly fixed with Lasik.

[instaheat]

I feel bad for you. I'm sorry to hear that. I appreciate your comment. I do have excellent eye sight and am of average height.

I've wondered if flying private would be any different. I don't "NEED" to work for AA.

[optymizer]

Interesting. Anecdotally, I think I saw plenty of 6ft captains on my way out of the airplane.

[cjbprime]

For what it's worth, I'm only an enthusiast but would be surprised to hear either of those are significant issues, unless you're saying that your corrected eyesight is also poor.