Hello there. I have a dream of becoming an airline pilot one day, and I am really close to starting my awesome journey towards becoming an airline pilot. But one thing concerns me. So the thing is that I think that I have a really mild case of turrets. I’ve never went to the doctor to get evaluated because it is really minimal. The only thing that I do is blink really hard a lot of the times during the day and my eye sometimes moves on it’s own. For example I may be looking at my mom and all of a sudden I look to the left really sharply, but I am not focused on any object or anything, I just look to the left. My parents never thought anything was wrong with me because they thought it was normal. That’s the only thing I do that I would consider turrets, other than that I am a completely normal person. I’m kinda worried about this and was wondering if it would affect me in my journey towards becoming an airline pilot. I have a 1st class medical certificate and I got admitted into Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. I will start in august.
What I find concerning is question 18 on the medical application lists “Eye or vision trouble except glasses” and “Neurological disorders; epilepsy,
seizures, stroke, paralysis,. etc.”. You didn’t mention any concern by the AME so that indicates you checked “NO” for both which would be less than truthful. Aside from the criminal aspects of lying on a federal govt form are the possible physical implications. I’m not a Dr so I have no idea how something like turrets might affect a person. I have read however that Turrets “ticks” can get worse with stress. The FAA doesn’t ask those questions to stop you from being a pilot, it’s to protect you and anyone who might be flying with you. If you were flying a challenging approach in severe weather and uncontrollably looked away the consequences could be grave.
I believe the responsible thing to do is have yourself checked out and make sure this is not an issue. While I understand this could impact your career, the other possible ramifications are far worse.
I think you need to contact your AME about this. I am not a doctor, but if what you say is true I think the mistake needs to be corrected. By that I mean if you checked “No” for Box 18.L. on form 8500-8, that needs to be corrected. But again, I am not a doctor. Nor am I authorized to provide legal guidance. I cannot diagnose you, but I would get a doctor to give you a professional exam to help you get to the bottom of this.
Thank you all for your responses. After doing some research I found out that I do not have turrets, it’s something called Nystagmus. And I did tell the examiner that I was diagnosed with adhd and with that came those weird eye movements and I told him that this only affected me when I was a kid but it is not affecting me as much now in my daily life. It seems to only happen when I am not occupied with something. If I am physically doing something like a chore, I get it done without any problems. And he then gave me a 1st class medical. Do you think I should return? Or get reevaluated? I got my 1st class medical 2 months ago.
If you have been diagnosed with something, you need to report it to the FAA. Yes, I think you should return to your AME and have an honest discussion with him about your medical history and see if you need to officially inform the FAA of this, which I suspect you will need to.
From the FAA:
“Nystagmus of recent onset is cause to deny or defer certificate issuance. Any recent neurological or other evaluations available to the Examiner should be submitted to the AMCD. If nystagmus has been present for a number of years and has not recently worsened, it is usually necessary to consider only the impact that the nystagmus has upon visual acuity. The Examiner should be aware of how nystagmus may be aggravated by the forces of acceleration commonly encountered in aviation and by poor illumination.”
Thank you for telling me this. The thing is that I did tell the examiner about this, that my eye moves sometimes involuntary. And he said that it’s ok as long as it does not affect you during training. I even showed him what I do sometimes. He gave me an eye test and I did well. So basically this might be a newbie examiner if he said this was ok.
Telling the examiner and writing it down on the application are very different things. Plus the fact that you went from having turrets to having nystagmus in less than a day is concerning unto itself. Either way, we are pilots here and are really not able to help you with medical certification issues. You need to direct your questions to your AME or another aviation medical professional.