Drug and alcohol testing commenced at Moorabbin
Our company was the first organization in Australia to have the CASA drug and alcohol testing conducted on it. For the information of any other businesses or individuals to be tested we have elected to post our experiences here.
Firstly I must point out that the conduct of the tests was conducted in a professional manner and I have no intention of getting into a slanging match with anyone on this issue. However I believe this to be a suitable forum to outline the facts and let the readers form their own opinion.
Testing was conducted on 6 pilots, a combination of students and staff. Of the 6 tests conducted a person was identified as positive. This person was immediately stood down from any aviation related duties.
24 hours later the test was determined to be a false positive and the person is returned to flying duties. I feel that the turnaround time was satisfactory but I wonder how long it would take in a remote area. I think it would be a fair assumption that operators in remote areas will be less likely to be tested than capital city operators due to the logistics involved in remote area testing. In our situation the equipment used for testing was fairly bulky, required 3 phase A/C power and required trolleys to transport it.
Firstly, this particular person has potentially had their career affected as they were about to commence a new job dependant on obtaining a qualification prior to the Easter break which was not able to be completed. No doubt that person has also probably been through the most harrowing 24 hours in their life If the testing is found to be erroneous I strongly feel that there must be access to some sort of compensation. It seems unjust that when an operator is in error CASA comes down hard but when the shoe is on the other foot all bets are off.
Consider the scenario of a Chief Pilot or CFI returning a false positive. All pilots are immediately grounded with serious implications on any business.
Testing after an incident. A serious incident is one in which the occurrence gives rise to a danger of serious damage or death to an aircraft, person or property. I feel that this is a very vague definition and CASA needs to specify this particular section. If a student clips CTA, has a bird strike, a blown tyre on landing, or crosses an active runway are we required to conduct a drug and alcohol test. These tests cost approximately $300. Does the company foot the bill. If a fairly busy flight school has 15 of these a year that equates to $4500.
If the operator passes this fee on to the customer what does this do to the safety and reporting culture. Are pilots going to be less likely to report these matters? Of course they are. Personally I sincerely believe that overall there is a negative impact on aviation safety.
While I appreciate that 6 candidates is too small a number to conduct any sort of statistical analysis, lets have a look at it anyway. 16 % of pilots tested positive on the initial testing with 100% of the positive tests found to be in error, or as CASA likes to call it a “false positive.”
To date these are not very inspiring figures.
While I recognize that the effect of drug or alcohol consumption is serious I believe safety would be better improved by CASA putting the resources into a ramp check. Perhaps incorporate the testing as part of a wider check of license, medical, weight and balance, pax manifest, current weather etc. This would also accurately target people about to go flying rather than the student participating in a theory class.
If any operator is subjected to random drug testing I would advise that you nominate a discrete area. We made the mistake of nominating a very prominent area directly off our reception area for the testing. The differences in duration of tests for positive and negative results made the results of the tests fairly obvious. I would suggest you consider this when nominating the place for the test to be conducted.