Icepack - you are absolutely correst when you talk of the dangers of fasle positves. Imagine the scene - 25 year captain who knows he is legal comes up positive on breath test. He goes home, calls Chief Pilot to set up loss of licence insurance (at one point being drunk at work was instantly assumed to be alcoholism hence medical removed), then picks up his phone to the solicitor to sue for all he is worth.
This is why the Airlines in the UK have not pushed for breath testing and has allowed the very sensible and workable self-policing system that IMHO works brilliantly in my company. If someone was clearly unfit to fly through alcohol misuse, drug misuse, stress, fatigue whatever i would have no hesitation to tell the the company and get the standby out. Surely this is better than some draconian system that only targets minute quantities of alcohol.
FlipFlopFlyer - you have totally missed the point of this. Singling out BA as a company does you no credit at all, it just fans the flames of the media inferno.