Shortly after Continental Airlines pilot Newton Dickson complained about the same lack of training and pilot fatigue that led to the fiery crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo, N.Y., on Feb. 12, 2009, he was referred to Dr. Michael Berry, now head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s medical certification office, who diagnosed him with epilepsy and medically grounded him. Dickson hasn’t flown since. Now a security officer for the Transportation Security Administration at the same Houston airport where he was based as a pilot, Dickson appeared last month before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to appeal an administrative law judge’s ruling upholding the permanent revocation of his pilot’s license even though there is no clinical evidence he ever had epilepsy.

To make such a ruling, the judge had to ignore the testimony of Dr. Brian Loftus, a Houston neurologist and specialist in seizure disorders, who said that Dickson had no clinical symptoms of epilepsy. An EEG, a neurological workup, medical transcripts and affidavits from witnesses — including one from the same pilot Dickson reported for almost overshooting a runway — all basically said the same thing, according to court documents.