PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Alcohol Testing of Flight Crew
View Single Post
Old 31st May 2011, 21:25
  #112 (permalink)  
linmar
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Europe
Posts: 55
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Maybe this has already been posted earlier in the thread since I didn't read all the pages. But the question was raised in the first three pages why the Swedish police are testing arriving crews and not departing. The law in Sweden was changed 1st of September last year and now is similar to the laws that applies to driving.

The limit for flying is now 0,2 promille of blood or 0,10 milligram of alcohol per liter of your breath. The penalty for this offense is either a fine or imprisonment for a maximum of six months. Since there has been no reports of pilots being over the limit there is still no way to know what a court will sentence.

The next limit is 1,0 promille of alcohol in your blood or 0,50 milligram of alcohol per liter of your breath. In this case it is considered a serious offense and the maximum penalty is 2 years imprisonment.

In order to apply the above laws one obviously has to have broken them. Being over the limit as departing crew wouldn't be considered as breaking the law, since there is no law against intending to fly over the limit. In case you were to show up over the limit at your aircraft the only thing the police can do is to wait and make sure that you don't depart while having more than 0,2 promille in your blood.

Arriving over the limit is obviously another case and with the new law Swedish police are now allowed to randomly test pilots which wasn't the case before when they could only test crew when there was already a suspicion that they were under the influence.

Another thing worth to mention is that Swedish police are equipped with quite sophisticated breathalyzers that are considered reliable enough to be used in a trial. I don't know if they are used by the airport police, but if they are you can't deny the result and demand a blood test which was the case a few years back.
linmar is offline