Can we rethink this from first principles here?
Our institutional treatment of the issue is hung up on a moral / legalistic framework when it should be looking at a systems performance and safety framework.
Consider our reaction to the video of a pilot staggering through the security checkpoint, which can in many cases be summed up as, "whoa! that guy needs to be sanctioned .... unless it was due to a medical condition."
The objective here is to avoid the situation in which someone who is not at the top of his or her game takes control of an aircraft full of passengers. If we get confused, and think that it's about stopping bad behavior, then we lose the plot.
If a pilot is not in top condition, why do we even care the reason? That person should not be flying an airplane that day. Period. In the case of pilot error resulting in a crash, everyone's equally dead, regardless of whether the pilot's performance was impaired because of substance abuse, the flu, diabetic crisis, a fight with his wife, fatigue from overwork, or a crappy night's sleep because of the teenagers partying until 4:00 AM in the next hotel room.
We seem to be confused here. Yes, there is a moral, ethical, or contractual difference between, on the one hand, being unfit to fly because you contracted flu and are running a high fever and, on the other hand, being unfit to fly because of something you did to yourself. But that's really between you and your employer; as a co-worker or a passenger I don't care. I'd much rather that the procedures around detecting impairment focus 100% on the safety of the aircraft and 0% on enforcing any legal or contractual obligations.
Last edited by Gauges and Dials; 4th Jan 2017 at 03:02.
Reason: minor typos