United pilots in trouble after drinking...
08-29-2016, 09:58 AM
#61
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2010
Position: 747 Captain, retired
Posts: 928
Originally Posted by Regularguy
The elephant isn't about being "legal" according to the FOM it's about not having alcohol in your blood when the pilot steps into the airport and begins their fiduciary duties.
When I started the FOM had a 24 hour rule and yet occasionally there were problems. BTW the 24 rule was eliminated when a scab was turned in on an international trip by a striker.
The point is there's enough time to enjoy an adult beverage or two and yet these two, out of how many others, were nailed. The problem isn't the UK, the 12 or 8 hour rules it's the pilot who made a bad choice. We need to make sure it's not me. But of course after several pints and a night cap at the bar before turning in, me probably won't consider the consequences.
Now how can we make the elephant leave? Rules certainly don't seem to phase it.
When I started the FOM had a 24 hour rule and yet occasionally there were problems. BTW the 24 rule was eliminated when a scab was turned in on an international trip by a striker.
The point is there's enough time to enjoy an adult beverage or two and yet these two, out of how many others, were nailed. The problem isn't the UK, the 12 or 8 hour rules it's the pilot who made a bad choice. We need to make sure it's not me. But of course after several pints and a night cap at the bar before turning in, me probably won't consider the consequences.
Now how can we make the elephant leave? Rules certainly don't seem to phase it.
08-29-2016, 12:50 PM
#63
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Dec 2010
Position: 787 Capt.
Posts: 638
Originally Posted by CousinEddie
Misuse of Alcohol Can Lead to Serious Legal Trouble
By John Hanson, ALPA Attorney and Contract Administrator
Suppose you are out on a trip. You have a 16 hour layover in Phoenix. You get to the hotel and go out to dinner with your crew and have a few drinks. You decide to go out to a bar to watch a ballgame on TV and there you have several more drinks. You stop drinking exactly 12 hours before the next day’s scheduled departure at 9 am. You stay out a bit longer to see the end of the game, and then back at the hotel you can’t get to sleep. You toss and turn and finally fall asleep around 1:30 in the morning. The next morning you are feeling tired and doze off after the alarm and wake-up call. You wake up with a start and have five minutes before show time for the van ride. You don’t have time to shower – you just throw on your uniform, and race down to the lobby. You are five minutes late for the van, and the hotel was just starting to call up to your room.
At the airport you pass through security and go to the gate to park your bags on the aircraft. The CSR checks you in, and you go on down to Station Ops. Twenty minutes later as you are getting ready to head back up to the gate the Station Manger arrives and asks to talk to you. You have what seems to be an innocuous conversation, but then she tells you that you will need to take a breathalyzer test. The CSR smelled alcohol on your breath, and so does she.
The next thing you know, you are on the phone with the FODM who tells you that the flight is being delayed and the tester is on the way to the airport. You call your Council Chairman, who manages to patch in an ALPA lawyer on the phone. The testing process is explained, including your obligation to comply with the breathalyzer test, as the Station Manager has observed you and determined that there is a “reasonable suspicion” that you may be presently under the influence of alcohol. The Station Manager received training on making these evaluations, and once the decision is made to summon the tester, there is no turning back. If you refuse the test, the FAA treats it as a positive.
Fifteen minutes later you take the initial “screening” breath test. It reads .046. Since this is over the limit of .04, you will have to take a confirmation test, the results of which will count towards determining if you are in violation of the FAR. These are the longest 15 minutes of your life. The second test reads .044. You are taken off the trip, and told to wait in Operations for further instructions. You call back the ALPA attorney, and have the first of what will be many conversations with him. Shortly after that your Flight Manager calls and says that they are arranging for you to deadhead back to the domicile, where he and other members of the local EAP team will meet you.
In the coming days and weeks the following will transpire: The Company asks you to submit to a formal substance abuse evaluation to determine whether you have a medical problem with drinking. As the ALPA attorney explained, the FAA’s Federal Air Surgeon has found that a single incident of reporting for duty with a blood alcohol content above .04 is nearly always evidence enough for the FAA to invalidate your medical certificate. Your only route back to a First Class Medical Certificate is treatment through EAP. The results of the breath tests will be reported to the FAA, and they will open an investigation. Sometime after that the letter will come – probably via FedEx. The FAA is revoking all of your certificates. The Order of Revocation is effective immediately because the FAA Administrator has determined that an Emergency exists, threatening air safety. The emergency threat is you.
The ALPA lawyer analyzes the case and explains that while you can appeal the revocation, there is no practical hope of overturning the revocation of your certificates. With the breathalyzer test results in hand, and given the fact that you had already reported for duty at the aircraft, and conducted flight planning in Operations, the FAA’s case is virtually air tight. The breathalyzer machines are maintained, tested, and re-calibrated regularly to meet federal standards, and there is very little chance that a judge will find the result to be unreliable. An appeal of an FAA action against your certificates is heard by an Administrative Law Judge of the NTSB. But under the law, the Administrative Judge cannot overturn the FAA’s choice of penalty if it is within the range of penalties established by the FAA for the particular violation. So if you are found to be in violation, even a sympathetic Judge cannot overturn the revocation.
So you try to “plea bargain” with the FAA. The Chief Counsel’s Office of the FAA in Washington has instructed all FAA field attorneys that they may not plea bargain down a pilot alcohol violation case to anything less than revocation of all certificates. The best they are willing to offer is to perhaps shave some time off the 1 year period from the date of the revocation before you will be allowed to reapply and seek to regain your certificates. Since it took the FAA two months to issue the revocation order, the reduction in time means that you will still won’t be able to even begin the road back to flying for a full year – and that is dependent on full compliance with the EAP program and successful medical recertification.
Suppose you agreed to enter EAP. During that one year before you can even try to regain your pilot certificates, you will be working to re-qualify for a medical certificate. As you are not medically fit to fly, you will be able to use sick leave, vacation and short term disability to keep getting paid. But unfortunately you injured your shoulder last year and were out four months re-habbing a torn rotator cuff. You only have two months of sick leave. Add in 30 days of vacation, and 3 months of 55% disability pay, and after six months there is no more income. Six months later you have re-taken the written exams for private, instrument, multi-engine,commercial and ATP ratings, and you are working with an FAA designated examiner to complete the flight checks.
Now let’s suppose that you were not laying over in Phoenix, but instead were in London. And it was not a CSR who smelled alcohol on your breath, but instead at security you dropped your bag while hoisting it up on the belt for the x-ray machine and it fell on your foot. The screener asked you if you are alright, and you exchange pleasantries. 20 minutes later it is the London police who find you in Operations to report that the screener smelled alcohol. The police have a breathalyzer with them. The FARs require that you submit to a breath test by a law enforcement agency, or again, the result will be presumed to be positive.
After the breath test, you are taken to the police station and a doctor is called to administer a blood test. You are then arrested and taken to jail. You are charged with a violation of the Transport Safety Act of 2003, in that you performed activities that are ancillary to aviation functions with an unlawfully high blood alcohol content. You are arrested because you had “reported for duty,” and, as Captain, you flight planned and signed for the aircraft. This could be considered to be preparing to serve as a pilot of an aircraft.
Yours might be a test case, as you were arrested down in Operations – not on board the aircraft as has occurred with a few other foreign pilots in London. But you are clearly over the legal limit, as in the UK the legal limit is .02. Now in addition to the FAA revocation, you are facing criminal prosecution in a foreign country, with the possibility of jail time. ALPA might be able to help you find a criminal defense attorney, but there is little we can do to keep you out of the news. British news outlets pay “stringers” to hang around the courts to pick up juicy stories for them. You get written up in the London tabloids, which in this internet era, means that the local TV station back home will soon find out and reporters will be camped out at your door.
These scenarios are not precise descriptions of actual pilot cases, but are drawn from elements of real cases. Please take heed and do not become my next “client.”
By John Hanson, ALPA Attorney and Contract Administrator
Suppose you are out on a trip. You have a 16 hour layover in Phoenix. You get to the hotel and go out to dinner with your crew and have a few drinks. You decide to go out to a bar to watch a ballgame on TV and there you have several more drinks. You stop drinking exactly 12 hours before the next day’s scheduled departure at 9 am. You stay out a bit longer to see the end of the game, and then back at the hotel you can’t get to sleep. You toss and turn and finally fall asleep around 1:30 in the morning. The next morning you are feeling tired and doze off after the alarm and wake-up call. You wake up with a start and have five minutes before show time for the van ride. You don’t have time to shower – you just throw on your uniform, and race down to the lobby. You are five minutes late for the van, and the hotel was just starting to call up to your room.
At the airport you pass through security and go to the gate to park your bags on the aircraft. The CSR checks you in, and you go on down to Station Ops. Twenty minutes later as you are getting ready to head back up to the gate the Station Manger arrives and asks to talk to you. You have what seems to be an innocuous conversation, but then she tells you that you will need to take a breathalyzer test. The CSR smelled alcohol on your breath, and so does she.
The next thing you know, you are on the phone with the FODM who tells you that the flight is being delayed and the tester is on the way to the airport. You call your Council Chairman, who manages to patch in an ALPA lawyer on the phone. The testing process is explained, including your obligation to comply with the breathalyzer test, as the Station Manager has observed you and determined that there is a “reasonable suspicion” that you may be presently under the influence of alcohol. The Station Manager received training on making these evaluations, and once the decision is made to summon the tester, there is no turning back. If you refuse the test, the FAA treats it as a positive.
Fifteen minutes later you take the initial “screening” breath test. It reads .046. Since this is over the limit of .04, you will have to take a confirmation test, the results of which will count towards determining if you are in violation of the FAR. These are the longest 15 minutes of your life. The second test reads .044. You are taken off the trip, and told to wait in Operations for further instructions. You call back the ALPA attorney, and have the first of what will be many conversations with him. Shortly after that your Flight Manager calls and says that they are arranging for you to deadhead back to the domicile, where he and other members of the local EAP team will meet you.
In the coming days and weeks the following will transpire: The Company asks you to submit to a formal substance abuse evaluation to determine whether you have a medical problem with drinking. As the ALPA attorney explained, the FAA’s Federal Air Surgeon has found that a single incident of reporting for duty with a blood alcohol content above .04 is nearly always evidence enough for the FAA to invalidate your medical certificate. Your only route back to a First Class Medical Certificate is treatment through EAP. The results of the breath tests will be reported to the FAA, and they will open an investigation. Sometime after that the letter will come – probably via FedEx. The FAA is revoking all of your certificates. The Order of Revocation is effective immediately because the FAA Administrator has determined that an Emergency exists, threatening air safety. The emergency threat is you.
The ALPA lawyer analyzes the case and explains that while you can appeal the revocation, there is no practical hope of overturning the revocation of your certificates. With the breathalyzer test results in hand, and given the fact that you had already reported for duty at the aircraft, and conducted flight planning in Operations, the FAA’s case is virtually air tight. The breathalyzer machines are maintained, tested, and re-calibrated regularly to meet federal standards, and there is very little chance that a judge will find the result to be unreliable. An appeal of an FAA action against your certificates is heard by an Administrative Law Judge of the NTSB. But under the law, the Administrative Judge cannot overturn the FAA’s choice of penalty if it is within the range of penalties established by the FAA for the particular violation. So if you are found to be in violation, even a sympathetic Judge cannot overturn the revocation.
So you try to “plea bargain” with the FAA. The Chief Counsel’s Office of the FAA in Washington has instructed all FAA field attorneys that they may not plea bargain down a pilot alcohol violation case to anything less than revocation of all certificates. The best they are willing to offer is to perhaps shave some time off the 1 year period from the date of the revocation before you will be allowed to reapply and seek to regain your certificates. Since it took the FAA two months to issue the revocation order, the reduction in time means that you will still won’t be able to even begin the road back to flying for a full year – and that is dependent on full compliance with the EAP program and successful medical recertification.
Suppose you agreed to enter EAP. During that one year before you can even try to regain your pilot certificates, you will be working to re-qualify for a medical certificate. As you are not medically fit to fly, you will be able to use sick leave, vacation and short term disability to keep getting paid. But unfortunately you injured your shoulder last year and were out four months re-habbing a torn rotator cuff. You only have two months of sick leave. Add in 30 days of vacation, and 3 months of 55% disability pay, and after six months there is no more income. Six months later you have re-taken the written exams for private, instrument, multi-engine,commercial and ATP ratings, and you are working with an FAA designated examiner to complete the flight checks.
Now let’s suppose that you were not laying over in Phoenix, but instead were in London. And it was not a CSR who smelled alcohol on your breath, but instead at security you dropped your bag while hoisting it up on the belt for the x-ray machine and it fell on your foot. The screener asked you if you are alright, and you exchange pleasantries. 20 minutes later it is the London police who find you in Operations to report that the screener smelled alcohol. The police have a breathalyzer with them. The FARs require that you submit to a breath test by a law enforcement agency, or again, the result will be presumed to be positive.
After the breath test, you are taken to the police station and a doctor is called to administer a blood test. You are then arrested and taken to jail. You are charged with a violation of the Transport Safety Act of 2003, in that you performed activities that are ancillary to aviation functions with an unlawfully high blood alcohol content. You are arrested because you had “reported for duty,” and, as Captain, you flight planned and signed for the aircraft. This could be considered to be preparing to serve as a pilot of an aircraft.
Yours might be a test case, as you were arrested down in Operations – not on board the aircraft as has occurred with a few other foreign pilots in London. But you are clearly over the legal limit, as in the UK the legal limit is .02. Now in addition to the FAA revocation, you are facing criminal prosecution in a foreign country, with the possibility of jail time. ALPA might be able to help you find a criminal defense attorney, but there is little we can do to keep you out of the news. British news outlets pay “stringers” to hang around the courts to pick up juicy stories for them. You get written up in the London tabloids, which in this internet era, means that the local TV station back home will soon find out and reporters will be camped out at your door.
These scenarios are not precise descriptions of actual pilot cases, but are drawn from elements of real cases. Please take heed and do not become my next “client.”
Moral of this story, order a Diet Coke
08-29-2016, 01:35 PM
#65
Production Test Pilot
Joined APC: May 2013
Position: Production Test Pilot, Boeing
Posts: 97
No-one should drink the night before a flight, whether there's a ballgame, a presidential election or a bikini contest on TV; especially people who fly less than 10 sectors a month. There's plenty more work-free days during the month to enjoy a good cigar and some scotch at home, while doing nothing for the next 5-6 days.
People flying multiple sectors a month, by definition, should find another way to unwind. We all know how tough it is for pilots to abide by rest requirements and battle pilot fatigue. Sleep deprivation (a common occurrence for many hard-working low and middle of the order line guys and girls) is equal to being drunk, as far as your brain functions are concerned. Having a few drinks on top of that, it's irresponsible in the very least.
So yea, I agree, have a diet coke!
People flying multiple sectors a month, by definition, should find another way to unwind. We all know how tough it is for pilots to abide by rest requirements and battle pilot fatigue. Sleep deprivation (a common occurrence for many hard-working low and middle of the order line guys and girls) is equal to being drunk, as far as your brain functions are concerned. Having a few drinks on top of that, it's irresponsible in the very least.
So yea, I agree, have a diet coke!
08-29-2016, 01:43 PM
#66
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2013
Position: CA
Posts: 1,211
Originally Posted by Claybird
No-one should drink the night before a flight, whether there's a ballgame, a presidential election or a bikini contest on TV; especially people who fly less than 10 sectors a month. There's plenty more work-free days during the month to enjoy a good cigar and some scotch at home, while doing nothing for the next 5-6 days.
People flying multiple sectors a month, by definition, should find another way to unwind. We all know how tough it is for pilots to abide by rest requirements and battle pilot fatigue. Sleep deprivation (a common occurrence for many hard-working low and middle of the order line guys and girls) is equal to being drunk, as far as your brain functions are concerned. Having a few drinks on top of that, it's irresponsible in the very least.
So yea, I agree, have a diet coke!
People flying multiple sectors a month, by definition, should find another way to unwind. We all know how tough it is for pilots to abide by rest requirements and battle pilot fatigue. Sleep deprivation (a common occurrence for many hard-working low and middle of the order line guys and girls) is equal to being drunk, as far as your brain functions are concerned. Having a few drinks on top of that, it's irresponsible in the very least.
So yea, I agree, have a diet coke!
08-29-2016, 01:46 PM
#67
Banned
Joined APC: Dec 2009
Position: Narrow/Left Wide/Right
Posts: 3,655
Originally Posted by baseball
I think that's the take-away.
When they chat you up at security they aren't being friendly. They are gaining an opportunity to get closer and into your personal space so they can smell you up and more closely scrutinize your verbal skills and your non verbal gestures.
I don't know what sort of training they have, but it seems to be effective.
When they chat you up at security they aren't being friendly. They are gaining an opportunity to get closer and into your personal space so they can smell you up and more closely scrutinize your verbal skills and your non verbal gestures.
I don't know what sort of training they have, but it seems to be effective.
08-29-2016, 01:56 PM
#68
Proponent of Hysteria
Joined APC: Jun 2007
Position: "Part of the problem." : JL
Posts: 1,053
That stupid article doesn't even say what/if they blew anything. Any pax or airport staff can accuse any one of us for "looking drunk" the way some of us naturally look when we wake up overseas. Short layovers, long duty days, multiple time zones and half of us look like **** at show time regardless if we had a drink the night before or not.
I'd say the guys did nothing wrong until they post breathalyzers scores that say otherwise.
I'd say the guys did nothing wrong until they post breathalyzers scores that say otherwise.
08-29-2016, 02:17 PM
#69
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jul 2011
Position: CA
Posts: 1,027
Originally Posted by skypine27
That stupid article doesn't even say what/if they blew anything. Any pax or airport staff can accuse any one of us for "looking drunk" the way some of us naturally look when we wake up overseas. Short layovers, long duty days, multiple time zones and half of us look like **** at show time regardless if we had a drink the night before or not.
I'd say the guys did nothing wrong until they post breathalyzers scores that say otherwise.
I'd say the guys did nothing wrong until they post breathalyzers scores that say otherwise.
08-29-2016, 02:42 PM
#70
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jan 2011
Position: A Nobody
Posts: 1,559
Krudawg
You guys need to learn not to say "wrong" when part of it was right.
Scab caught international, that's what I wrote, changed 24 hour rule because of scab, that's what I wrote, it was an FAA inspector, well I heard it was a crew member who had been on strike who turned him, the loyal employee, in.
So FAA or striking crew member, same result they changed the 24 hour rule to 12 because of the low life. I do like the striker story better.
Please be a bit less confrontational in the future about stuff we may agree on.
Thanks!
You guys need to learn not to say "wrong" when part of it was right.
Scab caught international, that's what I wrote, changed 24 hour rule because of scab, that's what I wrote, it was an FAA inspector, well I heard it was a crew member who had been on strike who turned him, the loyal employee, in.
So FAA or striking crew member, same result they changed the 24 hour rule to 12 because of the low life. I do like the striker story better.
Please be a bit less confrontational in the future about stuff we may agree on.
Thanks!
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
Lbell911
Regional
23
04-22-2012 10:33 AM
