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primary duty of the CAA Administrator to apply physical standards to airmen, with the availability to individual airmen of hearing and review proceedings before CAB in cases where the Administrator's action was alleged to have been arbitrary.  In such circumstances, it was unformly [[informally]] the obligation of the Administrator to support his action upon an evidentiary record, and, where he failed to do so, his action would be overturned by CAB.  (See, for example, Matter of Pashke, 27 CAB 1143).  In that decision, it was emphasized that CAB, in reviewing the Administrator's action in such a case had a duty

"...to assure that individual rights are not ignored in the Administrator's implementation of his duties under the statute." (27 CAB at 1144)

Moreover, in such cases, individual airmen were uniformly assured a meaningful opportunity to seek a waiver from the applicable physical standards in particular cases.  If such an opportunity were denied by the Administrator, it would, on review by CAB, be made available by that Board upon a theory that, in individual cases, compensating experience and qualifications might be shown to be sufficient.

In addition, it was, under previous practice, the burden of the Administrator in certificate proceedings to establish that an individual's failure to meet physical standards prescribed by the Administrator was likely to interfere with the safe piloting of an aircraft:

"A showing...[of] merely the remote possibility that it 'might' at some unpredictable future time, interfere with petitioner's safe piloting of aircraft, or other duties of his airman certificate, is insufficient proof.... A probability of interference, rather than a possibility of interference with the safe piloting of aircraft must exist to be disqualifying."
(Matter of John Doe, 13 CAB 109,110).