What we should be avoiding is petty ideas about breath testing before every flight
Well maybe it's because English is not my mother tongue, but it sounds a lot like a recommendation from "capt pprune".
And I'm not from Germany nor have I ever lived there. I live in a little place called Sweden where we are all woken up 7 in the morning and put to sleep at 10.30 in the evening by our nanny. It feels safer that way. I can't really cope with personal responsibility.
So that's the reason why we shouldn’t be tested. We have all gone through so much. Poor us. Well shame on the public for not trusting us. Personally I can't blame them after what the media have accomplished. And to be honest, thanks to all the screw-ups who have created this mess.
If a simple breath test would mean that these kind of stories wouldn’t pop-up time and again, well then that seems to be a pretty cheep price to pay.
That's just a splendid way of approaching this! Well nothing has happened so far so nothing will probably happen in the future either. Better safe than sorry, right? Well obviously there actually is a problem because they keep slapping us in the face.... ALL THE TIME!
I have no problems with alcohol and I don't doubt my judgment, thank you very much! Can't really understand why you would assume that. FYI I exercise zero alcohol when driving my car as well. But I hear that you don't know much about people with such problems. They are masters at disguise. You would probably find them acting in a strange way if they where sober.
And do you really mean that if someone slips through with, lets say 0.3-0.5 promille (limit is 0.2), then that's OK? I wouldn’t expect much understanding from the yanks since they think it's perfectly fine to drive a car with 0.8 in your blood but I thought that we all had pretty similar views on this in Europe. Especially amongst pilots.
Just to answer Dannys challenge. Who's got conspiracy fears?? "Various clocks that appeared in the background". First of all I don't take stand on whether the BA documentary was real or just edited crap. But the fact is that a lot of people saw it and I'm pretty sure that you didn't explain to them what you where able to expose on pprune. I used it as an argument to simply state that the publics view might not correspond to flying lawyers view. Or as you superiorly like to put it: If you would have read the post....
And I take serious offence when you accuse me for disrespecting my fellow colleges. I did no such thing! If those pilots in that film where wrongfully accused I would stand by them any day.
The cars, which by the way isn't German, isn't "evidence" it's an "example". Maybe Flying lawyer can help you sort this stuff out
When it comes to people slipping through or not, this is an impossible thing to prove.... hence the expression "slipping through". It's just a statistical fact in a random and reporting testing system.
We simply have a difference in opinion on what the facts are in this case. You choose to "see" number of convictions as number of pilots working under influence. I believe that there probably is a larger number which haven't been caught by the system. Sure I believe that everyone is innocent until prove guilty but I'm not singling out people here. I’m simply admitting that there might be a problem here and discussing possible solutions. But according to you there is no problem - so no need for a solution.
Finally, I would gladly take a breath test before every flight if it would improve the publics respect and trust in us as pilots regardless if there is a problem or not. But obviously a breath of air per day is too much to ask for. They can’t just come and walk all over us in such a respect less way, after all we are pilots. Who are they to question our morale - they are just trusting us with their lives.
Keep the head in the sand; I'll stay on the lookout!