Really, Tom? For non-revenue aviatiors? When has the FAA respoonded to initial deferrals in four weeks? It hasn't happened in the thirty years I've been flying. The fastest they ever they turned things around was around eight weeks and that was years ago. You spend months in the queue to get the initial "you may not meet the requirements" letter. Once you're file is active on someone's desk, then things usually go pretty quickly (though submissions got slowed down after the anthrax mail scare causes everything now to go through an extra layer of handling)