PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Following last month’s emergency grounding of an Alaska Airlines plane, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced it’s creating a new committee that will examine pilot mental health and barriers pilots face in reporting mental health issues to the agency.

Concern around pilot mental health has taken on a sense of urgency after off-duty pilot Joseph Emerson was charged with trying to crash an Alaska Airlines plane last month, claiming he battled depression, was on mushrooms, and hadn’t slept in 40 hours.

“I think the FAA’s efforts are dead on,” Nance said. “Not because we’ve got something that has been hanging out there that needs to be done that hasn’t been done, but because it’s always the appropriate thing for aviation safety to ask the question, ‘Is there something more that we can do?’”

The panel is called the Pilot Mental Health Aviation Rulemaking Committee, or ARC. Aviation analyst and pilot John Nance says the FAA is taking the right approach.

Pilots are required to report certain mental health conditions to their aviation medical examiners who are trained to determine whether they are fit to fly.

The FAA said they were unavailable to speak with KATU on Saturday, however, they sent the press release saying the panel will build on previous work the agency has done to prioritize pilot mental health.

According to the release, that includes:

• Increasing mental health training for medical examiners
• Supporting industry-wide research and clinical studies on pilot mental health
• Hiring additional mental health professionals to expand in-house expertise and to decrease wait times for return-to-fly decisions
• Completed clinical research and amended policy to decrease the frequency of cognitive testing in pilots using antidepressant medications
• Increasing outreach to pilot groups to educate them on the resources available

Nance said some pilots may be reluctant to share mental health issues with their flight examiner for fear of being grounded.

“People have been extremely reluctant for monetary, as well as reputational purposes, to go down that road. I’m not sure that we can change much about that. But we must get to the point of giving people the help they need without wrecking their careers. How you do that may be open to a lot of discussion,” Nance said.

Joseph Emerson has pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder charges in Oregon state court. He faces arraignment later this month on a federal charge of interfering with a flight crew.