The outrage over the FAA’s recently announced medical certification policy to require pilots with a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or more to be examined for obstructive sleep apnea has been consistent across all channels. (And is it coincidence that the FAA implemented it just before Thanksgiving?)
But not one of the chest-thumping screeds has provided an understandable mental image of what a 40 BMI looks like. “Fat” is the most common adjective, but it does not even come close. Try “morbidly obese,” because a 40 BMI is the threshold for this condition. Such pilots would unlikely be able to squeeze into the cockpit let alone the pilot’s seat.
Let’s put it another way. What is your BMI, your ratio of height to weight? If you don’t know, here’s the link to a calculator. Now, keep adding weight until your BMI reaches 40. How much will you weigh? At 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds, my BMI is 28.5.
The normal BMI range is 18.5 to 24.9. Like many of my age, my BMI is in the “overweight” category, which starts at 25, and it is 1.5 points shy of obesity’s doorstep. And it’s not even close to the FAA’s 40 BMI trigger. To reach that I’d have to push the scale to 340 pounds. A 6-footer would weigh 295 pounds.
When was the last time you you saw a pilot of this size getting in or out of an airplane? So why is everyone giving the impression that the requirement imposes dire consequences on all overweight aviators? Let’s be honest here, many other obesity-related conditions rank higher on the medical certificate denial list.
[Read more…] about Weigh the Outrage of the FAA BMI Trigger