Medical guidelines for flight crew

New Delhi: Taking a serious view of obesity and high blood pressure among flight crew, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has come out with detailed medical guidelines to be compulsorily adhered to by them and followed by respective airlines before they undertake flying duties.
In fresh guidelines, the DGCA has laid down mandatory standards for airlines to get the blood pressure of the crew members checked and conduct medical examinations for obesity.
The regulatory body has categorically stated that if any crew member was found to be suffering from hypertension or high blood pressure in the blood tests conducted 24 hours before flying, they would be taken off from flying duties. A blood pressure limit of 140/90 is treated by DGCA as the upper limit of normal.
Those being treated for hypertension would be treated as being temporarily unfit for carrying out flying activities.
While acknowledging that there are no standard and universally accepted guidelines to measure obesity, the DGCA said one of the better methods to measure obesity was body mass index (BMI), which was a reliable indicator of body fat, as the correlation between body mass and body fat was fairly strong.
The DGCA also opined that BMI and waist-hip ratio were to be taken as parameters for grading and assessing obesity in civilian aircrew, rather than height-weight tables.
28/07/08 PTI/Sify

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Jul 2008, Safety Jul 2008