Air traffic controllers caught up in red tape over medical fitness
Certified for one location, so difficult to shift
• Canada’s air traffic controllers are not immune to Transport Canada’s backlog in processing aviation medical certifications.
Canadian Air Traffic Control Association (CATCA) president Nick von Schoenberg said that while the problem isn’t nearly as bad as those faced by pilots, some of his members are being kept out of work due to backlogs in processing medical certifications.
“In Ontario there are four that are waiting,” he said.
“Three have just been resolved in the Quebec region, and of those two had quite a lengthy wait, one was over a year.”
Already suffering staffing shortages, Air Traffic Controllers are normally certified to only work in one particular location, making shifting staff to areas experiencing shortages an exercise in impracticality.
Like pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers, air traffic controllers are safety-critical aviation careers that require regular licence and medical exam renewals.
Transport Canada maintains four categories of aviation medical certification.
Category four has the least-stringent criteria, reserved for students and pilots of ultralight aircraft and gliders. Those seeking a private pilot’s licence require a category three medical certification, while category two is reserved for air traffic controllers.
A category one certification is required for commercial and airline pilots, as well as aircraft maintenance engineers.
Air traffic controllers must renew their medical certificates every two years, with those over the age of 40 subject to annual recertification.
Once cleared by a certified physician, the paperwork is sent off to Transport Canada for approval — a process that normally takes 30 to 40 days.
Crippling backlogs in Transport Canada, however, have left some waiting much longer.
Earlier this week, Toronto-area flight school owner Dario Matrundola told the
National Post he has students waiting over a year for their paperwork to come back — leaving student pilots grounded once their temporary permits expire.
For 19-year-old budding airline pilot Max Comin, that wait’s stretched over two years.
Currently in possession of a valid category three medical certification, the British Columbia native applied for his category one medical in 2020 as part of his career goal of becoming a commercial pilot.
“They took a year to get my category three, instead of the 30- to 40-day turnaround time,” he said.
“So it turns out it was a good thing to apply early.”
Comin said countless phone calls and emails to Transport Canada over the subsequent two years have brought him no closer to finding out where his certification is.
“It becomes this game of asking questions like what could have gone wrong, is my file lost, did the doctor’s office not submit something,” Comin said.
For now Comin is still able to fly and train under his category three medical — which expires in 2024 — but as he prepares to begin his commercial pilot training, he’s hoping the delays won’t derail his future career plans.
Earlier this week, a Transport Canada spokesperson blamed a number of factors for the delays, including the COVID-19 pandemic and increased application volumes.
Transport Canada says it typically processes about 60,000 medical certifications annually.
CATCA president von Schoenberg said the pandemic only exacerbated existing delays within Transport Canada’s aviation medical bureaucracy.
“Even prior to the pandemic there were issues with wait times,” he said, describing Transport Canada’s “excessively complicated” bureaucracy as needless overkill.
“If you can go into a civil aviation medical examiner and they say you’re fit to work, or on the other hand if they say no your aren’t fit to work, to me that should be good enough — why do we have to wait for it all to go through one person to put their signature on it and then send it to Transport Canada’s licensing department to review the file and then send it back.”
Comin’s concerned the unexplained delays could hinder a future career he’s already sunk considerable time and money into training for.
“It’s like a punch in the gut to have Transport Canada holding you back,” he said.
“It’s simply just unacceptable.”