[Peetwo]

CASA Class 5 medical TWG recommendations???

Via Oz Flying:

CASA Working Group recommends changes to Class 5

20 April 2026



CASA this week published the deliberations of a Technical Working Group (TWG) that has recommended several changes to the Class 5 medical standard limitations, but will leave the 2000-kg restriction in place.

The TWG met in November last year under the supervision of Principal Medical Officer Kate Manderson, making several recommendations to CASA through the Aviation Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), which, if accepted, could see modifications to most of the restrictions applied operations under the Class 5 self-declared medical.

Among the key recommendations are:

• the 2000-kg MTOW limit remain in place
  
• POB limit of two be increased to four
  
• the 10,000-feet altitude limit remain in place, but be reviewed under the Class 4 framework
  
• controlled airspace access remain in place
  
• aerobatics be permitted provided the aircraft has no passengers and not be flown in competition or air shows
  
• day VFR only be retained, but IFR be reviewed under the Class 4 framework
  
• formation flying be permitted provided with one passenger only and not in air shows or flying displays
  
• the requirement for a Class 5 candidate to never have been refused a CASA medical be removed
  
• the ban on medical stimulants to treat ADHD be removed.
  

Most contentious has been the 2000-kg limit, which appears to be arbitrary with no medical support behind the figure. However, CASA told the TWG that the 2000-kg limit brings Australia into line with the UK and was "chosen to align with principles of structural robustness for impact tolerance for buildings".

Key to the POB increase was the need to carry family members on flights and also the need to make flying more economical by cost-sharing.

Whilst the TWG did debate raising the 10,000-feet ceiling, CASA explained that 10,000 feet has always been a set limit for flight without supplemental oxygen and taking into account the risk of hypoxia. The recommendation to keep the limit did not reach full consensus, with one objection citing pilots from the gliding community, who have been operating for years above 10,000 feet on self-declared medicals.

Restrictions on aerobatics and formation flying have been recommended for removal, with current limitations on these operations considered sufficient safety mitigators. However, aerobatics will be permitted solo only, and formation flights can carry only one other person in the aircraft. Neither will be permitted in air shows, and competition aerobatics banned. Formation aerobatics is also banned.

Another significant recommendation is to remove the requirement that a Class 5 candidate has never had a CASA medical refused for any reason. The TWG considered that any disqualifying condition no longer exists, that a pilot can be excluded from Class 5 only if their most recent medical was refused, and moving from Class 2 to Class 5 actually assisted with ongoing case management.

Whilst Class 5 is a self-declared standard, CASA's proposed Class 4 standard would require a medical certificate from a general practitioner rather than a DAME, which the TWG considered may permit some operations currently excluded from the Class 5 standard, such as the higher MTOW, flight above 10,000 feet and instrument flight.

The TWG recommendations are currently under consideration by ASAP, which will decide what formal advice to give CASA. However, the final say in any modification of the Class 5 standard will rest with CASA CEO and Director of Aviation Safety, Pip Spence, regardless of the recommendations.

More information including details of the TWG discussion is on the CASA Class 5 ]TWG website.

- Steve Hitchen

Australian Flying Senior Contributor Steve Hitchen is a member of the Class 5 TWG.

Comments:

David J Pilkington a day ago
I would like to see the risk assessment of that "aerobatics be permitted provided the aircraft has no passengers and not be flown in competition". Does the TWG even know enough about competition aerobatics to advise on it - an extremely broad range of operations? I thought that the intent was to limit G's (to keep the discussion simple) in which case Sportsman category contests and types such as the Super Decathlon would do that adequately. In general, competition aerobatics has a long, safe history. I think you will find that display flying and operating very high performance aerobatic aircraft is where the risks are.

Mark  David J Pilkingtona day ago
Note that Class 2 holders are never assessed for G tolerance, so nobody in CASA has the faintest idea about whether they're medically qualified to do aerobatics.
Class 5 holders have exactly the same assessment as Class 2 (i.e., none at all), but have to live with restrictions.
It's absolutely incoherent, but apparently the best we can expect.

---

Mark a day ago

Weird that CASA doesn't remember that they rewrote Part 91 to set the oxygen height at FL125 in 2020. Only the most ignorant among them emit resolute nonsense like, "CASA explained that 10,000 feet has always been a set limit for flight without supplemental oxygen and taking into account the risk of hypoxia."

They also hold on to the idea that the 2000kg limit is aligned with the UK Pilot Medical Declaration (PMD). CASA has simply fabricated that; The UK PMD allows operation of aircraft up to 5700kg. This has been pointed out to CASA so many times now that we can no longer assume good faith, they're just objectively lying about it.
They have been sitting on this and doing nothing about it since the TWG meeting report was produced on 19 November 2025.

This is entirely consistent with CASA's go-slow attitude on medical reform. Everything is drip-fed, everything needs to take forever.

The private GA community is entitled to be impatient with this stupid process. CASA has been "reforming" private pilot medicals for a decade and a half now, and almost all of us are still required to be on the same Class 2's that've been specified since the 1970s. Virtually nothing has changed.

Now we face the prospect of another six months for CASA to figure out whether to adopt the TWG's recommendations, another year for them to draft new regulations, and then, if we're lucky, CASA can decide to make a start on Class 4.

This will easily become a 20 year regulatory reform program by the time they've finished with it. And we all know -- as we have known since 2017 -- that it'll end with Class 4 looking a lot like FAA BasicMed.

They could easily promulgate regulations to implement BasicMed this afternoon. They won't, but they could. This process is going to take 20 years because CASA wants it to take 20 years; FAA has already done the hard work, CASA can choose the easy path whenever it suits them.

Plus BM does a Lazurus in reply to the TWG recommendations...   

Via FB: 

Benjamin Morgan

The USA introduced self-declaration medical reform for pilots in July 2016.... the UK did it in August of 2016. Some 10 years later and CASA are still pretending that they know more than the worlds most advanced aviation economy and the UK CAA - all the while claiming to be a responsive world-leading regulator, who are they kidding? It's entirely embarrassing for the CASA leadership and shameful that they can't get themselves on track a decade later. There is ZERO evidence to support the restrictions that CASA have applied to Australian pilots - yet they continue to falsely assert they're managing the boogeymen of risk! They have no peer reviewed study to support their restrictions, no supporting data to support their restrictions, just anecdotal opinions of people who want to control every aspect of our time in aviation. Bureaucrats who think they know it all and are better than everyone else. This is not a professional risk management approach, its amateur hour at best. CASA could have saved the tax-payer hundreds of millions of dollars and simply reformed by adopting the US or UK system. Instead, they chose to watch the Australian industry die on the vine, delivering a half-baked effort full of unique Australian restrictions that have zero real-world justification and no safety case to underpin them. CASA are happy to spend spend spend, delay delay delay and when challenged portray that they're a victim of unfair industry attacks and unfounded criticism - it's time that CASA owns how bad their reputation is and how incompetent they've become. It's not an unfair portrayal its a reality. CASA has always had the ability and option to deliver a world-class reform, instead they chose to obfuscate and damage the industry by delivering a donkey that you ride backwards. The recommendations of the TWG simply serve to enable CASA to continue producing backwards results, a better result would have been to unify in a call to drop the unique Australian nonsense and to adopt in full either the US or UK system. Instead, the TWG is there begging for scraps at the table. I guess the TWG are hopeful that if we hold our hands out and bow our heads our CASA masters will allow us simple convicts to have a little more bread.

MTF...P2