It’s funny bc the FAA is so against any type of neurodivergence in pilots (if you dont know it’s EXTREMELY difficult to get a flight medical certificate if you’ve been diagnosed with… anything, any kind of neurodivergence really. It’s insanely restrictive and a hot button topic in aviation) but every pilot I’ve ever met have been like. Extremely on the spectrum [positive]
Like there’s So Much to being a pilot. You HAVE to be autistic as fuck to do it. Not only do you have to understand the basics of how to control the airplane, you also have to understand aerodynamics, physics, meteorology, engine mechanics, how all the instruments work, tons of math, how radio signals work, navigation, and a bunch of other shit I’ve probably forgot. My current study unit is about the Earth’s magnetic field and how it affects the magnetic compass in the airplane. This is a whole deep dive of a chapter. And it’s important and not some kind of tangent. You have to know this just to make turns with any accuracy 😵💫 You have to be processing all of this all at once while flying and also just physically fly the airplane at the same time.
So all this to say it’s real funny the FAA says ohhh no you can’t be autistic and be a pilot. Bc like my instructor is the most autistic adult I’ve ever met in my LIFE and I relate him so much lmao. I told him I finally got gifted an iPad (for navigation, foreflight is Apple only) by my lovely partner and he went on a 20 minute hyperfixated explanation of lesser known features of foreflight. When we were supposed to be doing our preflight lmao. He’ll text me that we should fly soon and that he misses seeing me and I’ll text him right back asking if we can schedule next week and he clearly got distracted and doesn’t answer for three days lmao. He’s one of my favorite people and I get him so much lmaoooo but man if the FAA got rid of all undiagnosed pilots they’d have none left lel
Anyway I’m still waiting for him to text me back kdkdkdkf
So very fitting that the original Catch-22 (from the Heller novel) was about mental illness being grounds to stop a pilot from flying on military missions
(…and if a pilot wanted to stop flying, this was considered proof of sanity and therefore they couldn’t be exempted on those grounds)