Thousands of Pilots May Have Falsified FAA Medical Records

Federal authorities have been investigating nearly 5,000 pilots suspected of falsifying their medical records to conceal that they were receiving benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions that could make them unfit to fly, documents and interviews show.

The pilots under scrutiny are military veterans who told the Federal Aviation Administration that they are healthy enough to fly, yet failed to report – as required by law – that they were also collecting veterans benefits for disabilities that could bar them from the cockpit.

Veterans Affairs investigators discovered the inconsistencies more than two years ago by cross-checking federal databases, but the FAA has kept many details of the case a secret from the public.

About 600 of the pilots under investigation are licensed to fly for passenger airlines, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing case. Most of the rest hold commercial licenses that allow them to fly for hire, including with cargo firms, corporate clients or tour companies.

Experts said that the inquiry has exposed long-standing vulnerabilities in the FAA's medical system for screening pilots and that the sheer number of unreported health problems presents a risk to aviation safety. While pilots must pass regular government-contracted health exams, the tests often are cursory and the FAA relies on aviators to self-report conditions that can otherwise be difficult to detect, such as depression or post-traumatic stress, according to physicians who conduct the exams.

Many veterans minimize their ailments to the FAA so they can keep flying but exaggerate them to VA to maximize their disability payments, physicians and former officials at the aviation agency say.

• "Aviation authorities also learned that some pilots did not disclose their VA disability benefits because FAA-contracted physicians advised them to withhold the information..."


• "Louis Celli, a former executive director of the American Legion, said he suspected many of the pilots under investigation either are too sick to fly, have exaggerated their disabilities to VA or are defrauding taxpayers outright."


• "The FAA has known about flaws in its medical screening process since 2005, when inspectors general at the Transportation Department and the Social Security Administration – in an investigation dubbed Operation Safe Pilot – uncovered a scam that had run undetected for years.
  
  About 3,200 pilots in Northern California were collecting Social Security disability benefits, claiming they were too sick to work, but reporting to the FAA that they were medically fit to fly. Many worked as commercial pilots even though, under the law, those receiving disability compensation from Social Security can only work limited hours.
  
  The U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco prosecuted 45 of the most serious cases for fraud and related charges, winning convictions or guilty pleas in all of them. Officials said they could have prosecuted hundreds of additional pilots, but the cases would have clogged the justice system."


• "Pilot medical issues were the cause of 9 percent of fatal aviation accidents during a 10-year period from 2012 to 2022, data compiled by the National Transportation Safety Board shows."


• "...a 72-year-old Navy veteran, was convicted in December of making false statements to the FAA after he crashed a Cessna during an aborted takeoff in Rochester, N.Y. Authorities investigating the accident blamed it on pilot error and discovered that Felice had failed to disclose that he had six prior criminal convictions and was collecting $2,900 a month in veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder. He is scheduled for sentencing in September and faces up to five years in prison."


• "...a 35-year-old Army veteran who served in Iraq, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December after he ignored weather warnings and flew a helicopter into a Tennessee mountainside, killing a passenger. He had failed to disclose to the FAA that he was receiving veterans benefits for seizures and also had a history of strokes and marijuana usage, court records show.
  
  Jones, who was left paralyzed below the waist, admitted to duping customers, including the passenger who died, that he was a certified flight instructor. His attorney did not respond to requests for comment.


• "Joseph LoRusso, a Colorado-based aviation-law attorney whose firm has fielded "hundreds" of queries from military veterans under FAA scrutiny since July 2022, said it is an open secret that "probably greater than 85 percent of pilots are lying on their medical forms" because they don't want to flag conditions that might drag out approval or renewal of their licenses."