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The commercial airline pilot kept his condition a secret for years. He was supposed to inform the Federal Aviation Administration that he was seeing a therapist for anxiety and depression, but he couldnt bring himself to share his despair. He was afraid of the repercussions.
I lied to the FAA about the treatment I was receiving because that would have opened a can of worms. I would have been grounded until I was better, said the 31-year-old first officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his airline did not authorize him to talk with journalists. It is very easy to just not tell them whats going on.
The pilot continued working, but his symptoms worsened. During long stretches of depression, he ate little and was consumed by hopelessness. He could no longer conceal his mental health crisis from his employer or the FAA. He decided to ground himself.
I started to think I had two options: I either stop flying or I die, he said.
His story speaks to a larger problem in the profession: Many pilots would rather ignore or hide their mental health problems than disclose their condition and risk their livelihood. As a result, pilots who may be safety risks remain in the air while those who have admitted they need help face a costly, time-consuming and opaque process to meet the FAAs standards for medical fitness. A recent incident in which an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot tried to take down a plane has pushed federal officials to address the flaws in their mental health system.
The airline pilots and advocates interviewed for this report described a laborious series of medical evaluations that rely on paper documents sent through the mail and ask workers to submit to a maze of testing at their own expense. FAA officials acknowledged the system requires changes, several of which they have already begun to implement.
The FAA is committed to prioritizing the mental health of pilots and air traffic controllers, the agency said in a statement emailed to The Washington Post. The FAA has taken a number of recent steps to foster greater openness about mental health within the aviation community, the statement added, referencing a recently announced rulemaking committee aimed at solving these...