To be honest, FAA would really like to do away with GA. It is a nuisance to them. They are trying to kill it with paper if possible. They also throw up just about any excuse they can to revoke or deny a medical including high blood pressure and type II diabetes. Foolishness.
Especially foolish when you see an alcoholic doctor landing a 206 and hardly able to stand up when he gets out of the airplane. Fat, florid faced and drunk... is no way to fly any airplane.
The reality is that it is not as simple as you suggest:
To get a 3rd class medical is dead simple and takes 15 minutes every 2 years for those over 40; every 5 years for those under 40. A visit to the doctor, he checks that eyesight is 20/20, correctable if need be, distance and color vision is good, the person can hear a conversation in a quiet room, and has no history of heart or other significant medical issues. Not a problem.
bfl
“To be honest, FAA would really like to do away with GA. It is a nuisance to them. “
(For those not knowing, GA is General Aviation; single engine, light twins, and other type of airplanes; non-commercial in nature, although, GA airports are used for mail and package companies, charter companies, and other commercial ventures. These airports are simply classified as GA for discussion purposes to distinguish them from the larger commercial airline airports.)
There is the calculus of the story. GA provides half the revenue for GA airports but commercial airports provide many times that in revenue. I fly out of Centennial(KAPA), one of the largest GA airports in the country. We provide $700 million in local revenue and influence. A smaller GA airport out in the sticks might provide at best $1 million, if that, while Denver International Airport or Atlanta or Dallas or LAX are well into the billions of dollars in revenue and influence.
Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) also usually do not like GA airports as they get paid much more for controlling larger commercial airports. Their pay at a GA airport is about 75% of what they could make at a larger commercial airport.
Fuel companies prefer commercial airports as they sell thousands of gallons per airplane versus a few dozen gallons for GA airplane. (A single engine airplane has about a 40 gallon capacity. A Being 757 has 11,500 gallon capacity.)
Counties prefer larger commercial airports as that is billions in revenue versus hundreds of millions or less for GA airports.
What is short sighted is that without the GA airports there would be no place for pilots to train, or mail and package routes for outer lying areas, or medical transport for outer lying areas, or emergency management, or any of the varied services provided by GA airports.