A friend started a brewery and it seemed like he, and several people who worked there all got a few DUI's. We have a tiny, tiny, little winery. Bought these for everyone who manages and samples product as part of their tasking.



Use of the thing has been pretty interesting. For starters, near the legal limit, I would be too impaired to drive. Feels about like being on hour 15 of a duty day (no fun). In fact, it appears to this Irishman that even those of us in the industry tend to never drink ourselves over a .04 and that's with hundreds of gallons of great beverages at hand.

With data we can science the **** out of this, but it really is not hard.

A good buzz is BAC .02 to .04 with a max of .06. After .055 bad things start to happen physiologically which in addition to being bad for you, is literally a buzz kill and you can't get back to the sweet spot.

The average pilot (170 to 210?) can easily consume two beverages the first hour and one each subsequent hour while remaining below the vicinity of .04 BAC. Takes about 1 hour per drink to metabolize a typical adult beverage (at .015 reduction in BAC per hour). Probably best to get a little movement in, darts, a walk, food. The trendy places which allow you to walk with a "roadie" are actually a very healthy way to consume. The wild card is mixed drinks with a generous bartender. Frankly, I stay away from mixed drinks while on the road.

While it is easy to respect the 8 hour, or even a 10 hour limit, the goal isn't to get completely wrecked and try to recover. Frankly, the disturbance to your sleep and dehydration result in your not being recovered even if sober (not that many would do this, but a tiny handful do). If you ever find yourself doing this, there is no shame in getting help. Some of the best people I know have gotten help. ALPA has great resources which are well supported in the industry.

Enjoy, and if it is no fun; stop.

As a supplement to this, Georgia's charts show that women have a much narrower safe zone where slight impairment becomes intoxication. As we have more female pilots come on board probably time to cut the consumption in about half, which still would be in the ideal .02 to .04 range.

 

It's just not worth it to booze honestly. On the maddog there was not much time to drink considering we always got in late and left early. I occasionally will have one. I'd rather just drink at home when I'm not under a microscope. To each their own.

 

Uh oh..... are the drinking locations supposed to be mutually exclusive??? I've been doing it wrong I guess!

 

Yep. And you can start in the morning

 

Question, with the mega ae coming up, is there a way to try and bid for when you want to go to training? I don’t fully understand the bypass. If the ae is in March or April, the best times to train would be May or October obviously not wanting to train in the summer. If you are pretty senior in an award is there a way to control this at all? It’s not worth not bidding something for me but if I could control it it would help the family situation

 

The only option you have is to waive any pay due for junior pilots converting first and ask to be trained last.

 

Short answer -- no.

Medium answer:
1) You can bid to keep your vacation with no pay protection.
2) You can opt to allow junior people to convert before you with no pay protection.

Other than that, they've got you for the entire conversion window.

In light of the fact that there's only one substantial AE/year, you have a choice to make.

 

With a 365 day AE, what’s the use of training last? You have no idea when they will train the first, middle, or last guy. They could cram all the fleet award in summer, they could drag it out to start the first guy at the beginning of winter. The company doesn’t even know how they want to handle training until the award is complete. (Even then it’s weeks until training is published). There is almost 0 control.

 

Bypass almost always delays training into the fall or winter when line ops are reduced. Now that we are hitting the retirement/training boom it may change but if the award comes out in April a bypass puts you at the back of the line and more likely to go after the summer.

 

Thanks a lot