Cub Driver wrote in message . ..
Is this really as long and
convoluted a process as I've heard?

Five years ago, it was 3-6 months for two cases I know of.

from personnal experience:

a few years back, when I applied for the Class-III, for which
I needed a SODA, it took about 6 weeks for the paper work to
come back from Oklahoma city. Earlier this year in February,
I applied for a class-II upgrade, and another SODA was
required (most SODAs are valid only up to a given class of
medical, the only exception I know is the letter you get for
color vision which is valid for all classes) and upgrading
required going through the process again (no biggy, the fact
that the FAA even considered letting me fly for hire, let
alone granted it eventually, is one of those things that makes
me glad I immigrated!); this time it took over six months.

As someone else mentioned there was an article on AOPA magazine
about how some of the specialized AME in Oklahoma City happened
to be reservists, and how it affected the delays in processing
'special cases' -- A more recent article in the same magazine
seemed to indicate that things have dramatically improved
since then...

--Sylvain