It was a matter of discussion. I had this discussion with friends starting from the Sackler family and its OPiod problems and discussion tangents went all over the place.
One of which i was asked if there were pilots with felonies. I know of a very famous one - coincidentally Canadian, pilot who had the skill to save that A330 that ran out of gas over the Atlantic and landed safely in the Azores. Turns out he actually did prison time for drug trafficking.

My point was whether the pilot group used to be tolerant of these things (i did talk about this before when i was a mechanic myself decades ago) and back then they were like 'yeah well depending on the crime and length of time, they used to be more forgiving. So is it now the general crew consensus that ex-cons can work on your plane (theyre there, trust me) but cant fly?

Here's the beginning of the article. Some day I'll learn how to insert a URL.



Hero Transat pilot has drug trafficking record
Capt. Robert Piche jailed 2 years in U.S. in 1980s, newspaper says
MONTREAL (CP) — The Air Transat pilot who glided a crippled jet to a safe landing off Portugal last week served nearly two years in U.S. prisons for drug trafficking, Montreal La Presse reported today.

The newspaper, citing a corrections spokesman for the state of Georgia, said Robert Piche was found guilty in Nov. 1983 of ``trafficking a quantity of marijuana weighing between 101 and
200 pounds."

The rest of the story is at torontostar.com