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.
FAA spokesman Matthew Lehner acknowledged in a statement that the agency has been investigating about 4,800 pilots “who might have submitted incorrect or false information as part of their medical applications.” The FAA has now closed about half of those cases, he said, and has ordered about 60 pilots — who Lehner said “posed a clear danger to aviation safety” — to cease flying on an emergency basis while their records are reviewed.
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.
“There are people out there who I think are trying to play both sides of the game,” said Jerome Limoge, an aviation medical examiner in Colorado Springs who gives physicals to hundreds of pilots a year. “They’re being encouraged by VA to claim everything. Some of it is almost stolen valor.”
Federal contracting records obtained by The Washington Post show the FAA’s Office of Aerospace Medicine allotted $3.6 million starting last year to hire medical experts and other staff members to reexamine certification records for 5,000 pilots who pose “potential risks to the flying public.”
Senior officials at the FAA, including its top physician, Susan Northrup, declined interview requests from The Post. Officials at the Department of Transportation, the FAA’s parent agency, also declined to comment.
“The FAA used a risk-based approach to identify veterans whose medical conditions posed the greatest risk to safety and instructed them to cease flying while the agency reviews their cases,” Lehner said in a statement. “The vast majority of these pilots may continue to operate safely while we complete the reconciliation process.”
In many of the cases closed by the FAA, pilots have been ordered to correct their records and take new health exams; some have been temporarily grounded while the results are reviewed, according to Lehner, as well as pilots and their attorneys. Aviation authorities also learned that some pilots did not disclose their VA disability benefits because FAA-contracted physicians advised them to withhold the information, officials said.
The VA inspector general’s office is also investigating many of the 4,800 pilots to determine if any should be referred to the Justice Department to face charges of defrauding the benefits system, according to two senior U.S. officials familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Court records show at least 10 pilots have been prosecuted since 2018 on federal charges of lying to the FAA by hiding their veterans disability benefits and obscuring their health histories, including two whose cases were discovered only after they crashed aircraft.
The FAA has known for two decades that tens of thousands of pilots are probably flying with serious undisclosed medical conditions, based on past investigations and audits, and experts who have testified before Congress. But transportation officials had long resisted pressure from lawmakers and watchdog groups to expand background checks on pilots by running their names through medical disability databases maintained by other federal and state agencies.
The ongoing probe started in 2019, when the VA inspector general’s office, concerned that some pilots may be hiding mental health conditions or fraudulently receiving disability benefits, cross-checked the agency’s disability benefit records against a database the FAA shared of veterans licensed as civilian pilots. About one-third of the country’s 110,000 commercial pilots learned to fly in the military.
“Given the serious safety issues involved with flying commercial airplanes, and to promote the proper use of significant taxpayer dollars, we have been proactively reviewing certain VA disability benefits paid to commercial pilots based on conditions that may be disqualifying if true,” Inspector General Michael Missal said in an email.
As the FAA’s probe has intensified in recent months, Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg, who also serves as acting FAA administrator, VA Secretary Denis McDonough and congressional oversight committees have received briefings, according to government officials familiar with the conversations.
