China Airlines captain fails alcohol breath test
STOPPED: Screeners report suspicions to airport police; matter goes to FAA.
By DAN JOLING
The Associated Press
(Published: September 30, 2003)
A China Airlines pilot was prevented from taking command of a passenger flight when he was stopped by an airport screener who smelled alcohol. He then failed a breath test.
The pilot, whose name has not been made public, was stopped before boarding the Anchorage-to-New York flight about 10 a.m. Thursday.
The aircraft was an Airbus 340, a wide-body, long-range jet that can carry 295 to 380 passengers, depending on its configuration.
John Madden, Transportation Safety Administration deputy security director, said Monday that while processing a member of the air crew for security, a screener smelled alcohol and suspected that the person might be under the influence.
The screeners called airport police.
Jennifer Payne, spokeswoman for Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, said airport police administered a breath test to the pilot that showed a blood alcohol level of 0.087 percent. Police turned the matter over to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The legal limit for driving in Alaska is 0.08 percent. According to the FAA's Web site, no pilot may operate an aircraft while under the influence of alcohol with a blood alcohol level of 0.04 percent or greater. Also, pilots are banned from drinking eight hours before a flight.
The pilot was identified as the first pilot, or captain, of the flight, said FAA spokeswoman Joette Storm. The China Airlines station manager immediately suspended him from flying, she said, and the jet departed from Anchorage.
She did not know whether the pilot was returning to the cockpit after a stopover or whether he was part of a crew change made in Anchorage.
"The air carrier will have to answer that," she said.
China Airlines offices in Anchorage and Los Angeles had closed Monday night, and company officials could not be reached for comment.
The flight number and the total number of passengers aboard were not immediately available Monday night.
Storm also did not know whether the pilot left Anchorage afterward.
Storm said the TSA screeners also found an open container of alcohol on the pilot.
The FAA will investigate but is not likely to take action against the pilot.
"He would come under whatever the aviation authority in China is," Storm said.
The pilot does not hold a U.S. airman certificate.
"We can't take a certificate that we haven't given out," she said.
Instead, the FAA will forward its report to the governing body in China.
Storm said the FAA's San Francisco office oversees China Airlines. That office could end up discussing weaknesses in its procedures for keeping impaired pilots out of their aircraft.
"It's not likely that we will take action against the carrier," she said.
In June, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it was tightening procedures to keep drunken pilots out of the cockpit after the number of pilots failing Breathalyzer tests doubled.
Last year, 22 U.S. commercial airline pilots tested positive for alcohol use, up from nine in 2001.
By the end of June, nine U.S. pilots already had tested positive in 2003. The country has about 75,000 airline pilots.
The jump in numbers led the FAA to change its policy in January so that pilots who fail sobriety tests immediately have both their medical and airman certificates revoked. Both certificates are required for a pilot to fly.
Previously, only the medical certificate was revoked in cases of drug or alcohol use, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, the largest pilots union, said in June.
Pilots can get caught as part of the federal Transportation Department's random tests of 10,000 airline pilots every year or if their behavior arouses suspicion among airline officials or law enforcement officers.
U.S. pilots accused of being drunk face proceedings before an administrative law judge, Storm said.
The agency made no public announcement of the Anchorage incident and acknowledged it only after an inquiry from Anchorage television station KTUU.
"If it were a U.S. certified pilot and we were taking action, then we have had a policy in this region to put something out," Storm said.
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