Unfortunately, D and A testing is becoming a fact of life in the various 'nanny' or 'lawyer' states in Europe, and Australia.
In Australia, any aviation workers deemed to be 'airside', including paxing crew, can be selected at random by officious dogsbodies, and if you blow more that the equivalent of mouthwash traces, you are for the high jump. At least one of our crews has been tested in MEL (at the END of a nine hour flight
), obviously with negative results.
To the best of my knowledge, there has not been one incident of airline crew under the influence of alcohol, or an incident attributable to alcohol, in Aussie aviation history. A whole new 'iron ricebowl' group of public servants have taken it on themselves to declare it a 'problem', and have spawned yet another empire to feed off the taxpayer's teats.
When this program was introduced, a plastic 'drug and alcohol awareness calender' was mailed by out by CASA (its Director, by the way, an ex-CX 'head kicker'), to every pilot in Australia, reputedly at a cost to the taxpayer of $50,000+. Trouble was, it had a whole month missing, wrong days highlighted as 'weekends' and other errors; whoever proof read it might as well have been on drugs or alcohol themselves. This is the idiocy we are up against.
So this time, I think management are innocent. It is more 'nanny state' nonsense that flight crew will have to bear throughout their working lives.