The first US airline pilot with diabetes captains commercial flight

Just before 7:30 a.m. on June 22, Southwest Airlines flight 370 lifted off from McCarran International Airport, climbing westward over the Las Vegas Strip with Captain Bob Halicky at the controls. Banking north, the twin-engined Boeing 737-700 with the airline's ubiquitous blue, yellow and red livery leveled off at its cruising altitude of 40,000 feet for its flight to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. For the passengers on board, it was a normal flight, landing twelve minutes early. But Halicky, a 59-year-old Las Vegas resident, had waited nine years for this opportunity. It was the first United States commercial flight with a pilot with insulin-treated diabetes at the controls, according to the American Diabetes Association, a milestone years in the making. "It was super exciting to return to the cockpit and also to be the first ever [type 1 insulin dependent] pilot in America to fly [commercially]," Halicky said after the flight. For years, the FAA didn't allow pilots with insulin-treated diabetes to fly commercial airliners, even as other countries like Canada and the United Kingdom began to ease their restrictions, allowing these pilots to fly commercially provided they did so with a second pilot. The FAA deemed it too high risk. Any pilot diagnosed with insulin-treated diabetes was barred from flying commercially.<br/>