How to apply for aeromedical assessment

The medical application process

Medicals for pilots with CAA accounts and previous aeromedical certificates

  1. Make an appointment (use the contact form via the button at the top right of the page) to arrange to come and see me (also see appointments page). You can have an appointment up to 45 days before certificate expiry and keep the old revalidation date. If you have an appointment > 45 days early or any time after your certificate expiry date, your roll-over date will be based on the date of the medical.

  2. You can book an appointment with me many months before you need it. Some pilots book 6 months early.

  3. About 2 weeks before your medical, fill in your medical details onto the CAA online system, which is called cellma and is found at portal.caa.co.uk. The online form will need to be filled in before every medical.

  4. Pay the CAA their fee for using Cellma:about £15 for class 1/3, about £10 for class 2, LAPL is free

For those new to the system: a 3-stage process

Pilots, including trainee pilots, who are new to the system need to open an account with the Civil Aviation Authority CAA for access to the customer portal (portal.caa.co.uk) and then fill in an online form detailing their medical history. Any mis-typings can be corrected during the medical, so don’t worry if you make some errors, or don’t quite know what to put in various boxes (e.g reference and licence numbers!). You need to pay the CAA a small fee when you have finished filling out the form.

  1. How to apply for an CAA account; go to portal.caa.co.uk and follow the application process. Please note that the CAA can take up to 10 days to authorise your account so this is not an immediate thing, sadly. Put another way, please do make sure that you have your CAA account a good few weeks before your appointment with me

  2. Once your account is authorised by the CAA, you need to go back into the system and fill in a long questionnaire; it is not the most intuitive system. You will need to click the appropriate button to access the relevant forms for the medical that you wish to have..

    Rather confusingly, the buttons are all called ‘apply for a class 1 (or 2, 3 etc), though in fact filling out this form is just the first part of the application process.

  3. Professional pilots need class 1 medicals and need to make their initial application through an aeromedical centre, subsequent medicals can be done by AMEs

    Private pilots usually need class 2 medicals, sometimes LAPL. If you are uncertain as a private pilot, it is probably best to click class 2, this can be changed to LAPL during the medical if needed.

  4. I may be able to help if you run into trouble with the system, though equally you may need to ring the CAA for assistance. There is a guide here, it may help you.

This process will give you a CAA number; this number is very important, and will follow you around. It will be the number on your flying license, also the number on your medical. Please bring it to all medicals.