Someone left a comment on one of my videos back in January. The video was about avionics installers, the Aspen and Avidyne saga, part two. Nothing to do with weight, medicals, or BMI. And then, buried in a line about engineers being the wild west, @ghoflyer wrote this:
"Looking a lot slimmer! Congrats."
It's a kind thing to say. It's also the kind of throwaway line that does a lot more than the writer probably intended. It's been turning over in my head ever since. So here's the long answer. The borderline BMI, the AME who put me on notice, the switch to a PMD, the Mounjaro, and the small matter of a lawnmower I cannot fly.
This isn't a brag and it isn't a sob story. It's just what being a heavier pilot actually looks like from the inside. One example, mine, and nobody else's.
The borderline pilot
When I started training I was heavier than I am now. A fair bit heavier. My BMI sat right at the obese end of the scale. My blood pressure was controlled, colestrol was good, and I'd run a marathon once upon a time, back when my knees still took my calls. None of that shows up in the number though. The chart said what it said, and it was enough to earn me a closer look every single time.
Here's the thing about BMI. It's a blunt old number that can't tell the difference between muscle and the result of one too many airfield bacon rolls. The medical world has known this for years. The CAA still uses 35 as a gate. Go over it and you hve more hurdles to jump on the way to clear your medical.
The AME puts me on notice
At my last Class 2, my AME gave me the look. Next time, he said, if I was still sitting where I was sitting, there'd be extra tests. Either the rules were tightening or I was drifting the wrong side of the line. Probably a bit of both.
Did I take that as my cue to lose the weight? Did I heck. I found a workaround instead.
The PMD
I dropped to a Pilot Medical Declaration. A PMD. You self-certify against the DVLA Group 1 standard, the same one that says you're fit to drive a car, and away you go. No AME exam every couple of years.
What you give up matters, so be honest about it. No flying abroad. No instrument privileges. UK, day, VFR, single-engine piston, and that's your lot. What you keep is the ability to carry on flying without sitting across a desk from a doctor with a tape measure and a worried expression.
It's a legal workaround, and it isn't for everyone. It worked for me, right up until I started wanting things the PMD couldn't give me. We'll come back to that.
The aircraft I can't fly
This is where it gets real, and where the weight stops being a number on a form and starts being a locked door.
The Spitfire. Operator weight limits are a real thing, and they gatekeep them properly. Most rides cap you at around 17 stone, that's 238 pounds, 108 kilos. You get weighed on the day. No weigh, no fly.
And then the funny one. The Cessna 152. The flying lawnmower as I call it. The aircraft most PPLs learn in. Run the weight and balance with an instructor who's anything other than petite and a fuel load that's anything other than fumes, and you're out of the envelope before you've done up your seatbelt. That's the main reason I learnt to fly in PA-28s. I was too fat for the Cessna.
So the joke writes itself. I can fly the dream, a Spitfire. I just can't fly the C152.
Why the CAA actually cares
Strip away the BMI talk and the reason the form exists at all is 'pilot incapacitation'. The fear that a pilot keels over at the controls. It's a serious thing, so it's worth asking how often it actually happens. The answer is reassuring, and it's all public.
How often does pilot incapacitation actually happen? (tap for the numbers)
The CAA worries about pilot incapacitation because the consequences are serious. The frequency, thankfully, is not.
Start with the denominator. Owners and operators of around 10,600 UK-registered GA aircraft reported close to 600,000 hours of flying in 2024, per the CAA Annual Safety Review (CAP3146). Commercial flying adds millions of hours on top.
The safety picture. There were 158 accidents and serious incidents involving GA aircraft in 2024, of which 83 percent resulted in no injuries, at a rate of 27 per 100,000 reported hours flown. That's well below the past ten-year average of 202.
The headline rate. The most-cited UK study (Evans and Radcliffe, 2012, hosted on Skybrary) found 40 incapacitations among 16,145 commercial pilots in a year, an annual rate of 0.25 percent. That covers everything, in-flight and off-duty, upset stomach to cardiac. The actually-in-the-cockpit number is a fraction of that.
Cardiac specifically. A 2023 AAIB review of Mandatory Occurrence Reports going back to 2005 found three confirmed in-flight heart attacks in commercial cockpits across roughly 18 years. In every case the other pilot landed safely. On the GA side, one notable recent fatal was June 2022, when an instructor suffered a cardiac event during takeoff in a Piper PA-28 (G-BORL) and the accompanying qualified pilot landed safely.
The point. The CAA is managing a risk that almost never materialises in the cockpit. BMI is the blunt, cheap proxy they use to manage it at the medical stage. It's imperfect. It's what we've got.
Sources: CAA CAP3146 Annual Safety Review 2024; Evans and Radcliffe 2012, via Skybrary; AAIB safety reviews. Summarised 2026.
That's the incapacitation picture. The other half of the medical's logic is the BMI gate itself, which is less scary than its reputation suggests.
What the CAA actually says about BMI (tap for the detail)
There's no automatic ban. A BMI of 35 or above is the gate that triggers further assessment. Below that, it gets noted and nothing more. Above it, things kick in.
For new applicants (Class 1, 2, or LAPL): further assessment is required at issue. For existing holders who tip over 35: investigation within two months, and a Temporary Medical Limitation normally applied.
What the assessment looks like: medical history, lifestyle, waist and neck measurement, lipids, blood glucose, urinalysis, blood pressure, the Epworth Sleepiness Scale for sleep apnoea risk, a cardiovascular risk score, and a Medical Flight Test to confirm you can reach the controls, run the checks, and get out of the aircraft. Sleep studies on top if BMI is over 40.
The headline: BMI alone doesn't ground you. Failing the tests it triggers might.
Source: CAA Obesity Information Sheet (v2.1, Nov 2022) and the CAA Metabolic and Endocrinology guidance. Speak to your AME, not a blog post. Especially not this one.
You'll have spotted "a cardiovascular risk score" in that list. That's the bit that's just got interesting, and it's the bit that earns the 15% in the title.
The 15% in the title
As I write this, the CAA has just published revised cardiovascular guidance, complete with a new decision-making flow chart for AMEs. It's not a proposal any more. It's landed. And the line it draws for a Class 2 is a QRISK of 15 percent.
If you've never met QRISK, here's the plain version.
That last point isn't hypothetical. The trade press has already done the sums. FLYER ran the numbers on a 68-year-old pilot with no complications at all and got 15.8 percent. Over the line, clean living and all. Add treated blood pressure or a slightly grumpy cholesterol reading and it only climbs.
And the CAA reckons there are somewhere between nine and ten thousand private aeroplane and helicopter licence holders aged 60 or over, out of more than twelve thousand valid PPL medicals concentrated in the 50-to-70 bracket. That's a lot of pilots looking nervously at a calculator.
If your AME wants a closer look, it isn't cheap either. An exercise ECG runs around £500. An MRI perfusion scan can be the thick end of £4,000, with CT coronary angiography and stress echoes somewhere in between.
So why does any of this matter to me, sitting here at 56 with a better than I had, but still not perfect waistline these days? Because of where the story's been heading all along.
The decision
After a holiday, I did the thing everyone does. I looked in the mirror and finally admitted what I'd been parking for the best part of a year.
So I bought into the hype. GLP-1. Mounjaro. I'm naming it, and I'm not opening the debate. It's not a moral question, it's a tool, and it did the job.
The wallet took a hit, sure. But flying is expensive anyway, and what I spend on Mounjaro is roughly what I'd otherwise lose to a few of those legendary £100 airfield burgers I shouldn't be eating in the first place. Squint at the maths and it almost funds itself.
The result? I'm under the Spitfire gate now. The 152 is still some way off, but the trajectory's correct for the first time in years.
The 152 plan (such as it is)
The 152 has been on my list for ages. The trainer everyone else learnt in. The cheapest single you can hire. And for years, a closed door.
Why I'm thinking about it now is simply that the numbers are starting to look possible. Not yet. But possible. What needs to happen is either more weight off, or I find a 152 with a small instructor, run the weight and balance honestly, fly with as little fuel as is sensible, and see. Or I take up flapping my arms, which would at least be more aerobic.
This isn't a promise or a content commitment. It's a genuine ambition, nothing more. The Spitfire is on now, apart from the cost. The 152 is still in the queue, but it is cheaper than our merlin engining friend. The difference is one I can log as hours flown, the other is just a picture or two and or an extra £200 a certificate. Guess which is which.
The honest landing
So here's where the weight loss and the medical finally meet, and why this post exists at all.
I let my Class 2 lapse and dropped to the PMD because it was easier. But the PMD keeps me in the UK, in the day, in VFR. And Caz wants Le Touquet back. I want to carry on toward the IR(R). Neither of those can happen on a self-declaration. Both of them need a Class 2.
Which means going back to an AME, back to the medical I've been dodging, and yes, back to that cardiovascular risk score now sitting at the front of the new guidance. I think my number's under the line. Comfortably under, for now. But "for now" is the operative phrase, because the one input I can't diet away is the date on my birth certificate, and it only goes one way.
So I've talked myself into it. I'm rebooking the Class 2. Better to find out where I stand while I'm under the line than to keep not knowing. Lighter than I was, fitter than I was, and finally pointed at the door marked "abroad" again.
Funny old thing, a throwaway YouTube comment. @ghoflyer, you asked if I was looking slimmer. Turns out that was the short version. This was the long one.
Thanks @ghoflyer. The blog isn't built for comments, but the socials are. Come and find me there.
