You can't be saying that searching someone requires a comparable level of sobriety to piloting?

John R :confused:

PJ2 said pilots attempting to fly an aircraft while at/over the legal limit occurs extremely rarely.
Does that mean you're now withdrawing your earlier rant where you said
lomapaseo
Good point about Jetblast. :)
There's always a rush of spotters, armchair experts and melodrama queens into this forum if a pilot gets arrested for alcohol. :rolleyes: Thank God it very rarely happens.


B.

John R.
Yup - full agreement there.

Melodrama hehe!!

Yea, if Clinton screw his mistress it gives full page headlines for years,,if a Drunk pilot boarding a plane with 300 pax it is "melodrama" hmm,,

It´s just facts,,**** happens,,

Ps. after being in this forum less then one month i must say, i have never before encounter so many "step on mine or my colleges toes and we kick your ass DS

:p:p:p



I was going to delete this post on the grounds that it contributes nothing to the thread but Flying Lawyer's riposte in post #51 deals with it in a much more..........educational manner. On that basis only this post stays. Read and learn.

Duck Rogers
Moderator

Alcoholics
 

Alcohol affects everyone differently. Some, such as myself, are just plain allergic to alcohol. I can't drink. Period. I get severe gastritis. It also raises my blood pressure. At 65, I'm 120/80 without drugs and without alcohol.

Some pilots I've flown with can drink all evening and barely show it. However, a breathalizer would bust them.

Then there are the hard core alcoholics who can't even function without the equivalent of a 750ml bottle of wine in them. They act normally and can fool anyone unless their breath gives them away. These guys would be more likely to be noticed if they hadn't had their drinks.

There was a good book published in the 1970s called" "The Pilot". It was made into a movie in 1979. The Pilot - User Reviews - Yahoo! Movies

"The Pilot
by [email protected] (movies profile) Aug 20, 2004
Licensed pilots will love this movie. Very realistic, true to life scenarios, like proper radio call signs, frequencies, etc..
Cliff Robertson is a pilot himself and wanted everything as authentic as possible".

If you're fatigued, you're more likely to make mistakes. If you have alcohol in your system, you're more likely to make mistakes.

If you're fatigued and have alcohol in your system, the risks of a mistake mount even more. If you're fatigued, have alcohol in your system and have broken the rules ... game over, whether you think it's fair or not.

If you're flying at the pointy end, you've already got enough headaches without alcohol adding to them.

We can find on this thread the Captain's name,his flight number,...etc...etc...innocent till proved guilty they say...more reserve should be displayed there and moderators should monitor and erase names and any personal references...modos are sleeping?

eliptic Within only 10 minutes of this thread starting, you posted this: I assume you don't consider that to be melodramatic.
Not melodramatic?
Are you aware that many countries do not have a zero limit?
Given how you feel, I recommend checking before buying a ticket so you can avoid the need to exit first.
That may be because you usually express your opinions in the Passengers & SLF forum.
It's nothing to do with 'stepping on toes'. Some of the professional pilots are clearly fed up of the nonsense which is always posted on alcohol threads.

Do you really expect to be taken seriously in this forum when you make comments such as those I've mentioned, and respond to posts by professional pilots with such comments as and Or when you describe the pilot who was arrested as Drunk?
Where do you get that from? All we know at the moment is that a field breath-test showed the alcohol in his breath to be in excess of the extremely low aviation limit - which is a quarter of the legal limit for drivers in the UK.
Even if analysis of the subsequent blood sample he would have been required to give was to prove his alcohol level exceeded the legal limit, that would NOT necessarily mean he was drunk.

I've always found the professional pilots in this forum to be very helpful when asked questions by people who want to learn, and very patient even when faced with silly nonsense posted by uninformed people.
You've been on this website for less than a month, but they've seen it all before - each time this topic comes up. It's not surprising that some of them occasionally let their entirely understandable exasperation show.

.

Look

No-one says that flying while pished is good.

In the UK you can drive with 80mg per unit. So that presumably is safe- right?:uhoh: Otherwise it would be less.

Flying is quite a bit easier than driving, but the UK limit on flying is 20 mg.

Which is 25% of that which a UK citizen is judged to be perfectly safe and legal behind the wheel of a Ferrari.

Simple question?

Is the car driving limit too 'easy'...............One for the road?

Or the plane driving limit too 'tight'...........ermm mind my watch with those handcuffs.

Also, A lot of accidents on our roads are caused by drunk drivers (had to drive.....too drunk to walk:eek:) but very few (no?) aircraft crash due to drunk pilots. (Personally, I'd rather not fly unless I felt entirely fit to fly. the consequences of doing otherwise need little elaboration)

So while the UK 80mg limit serves us quite well in preventing many D & D car accidents, but sadly- not all.......

What does the 20 mg limit do for us in the aviation world?

In other words if you, or I, are ok to drive to the airfield at 80 mg (legally) but are illegal to fly until the level of alcohol has dropped to 20 mg, then plainly lots of folk who thought that they were (correctly, as defined by UK law, fit and sober enough to drive a car) ok, have committed the same sin as this Air Canada pilot did.

Having said that, for all I know he could have been roaring drunk. Or had a zero % blood alcohol figure. :)

I don't know which limit is 'off'. But for sure either the 80 'car' limit is too high, or the 20 mg 'air' limit is too low.

Blimey they're mad enough to let me on the road, so by God I demand a B777 to try out for myself this oh so awesome claim you make. With passengers !

Just a few points-

Fatigue is a serious problem and rest hours do seem to need reappraisal. Its an integral part of any work that lasts for many hours, it needs to be rationalised. What concerns me deeply is that if any member of the crew starts off on any duty impaired by alochol then fatigue is going to make matters exponentially worse.

Anyone, be they drivers or pilots, who think that even a very moderate intake of alcohol has no effect then they are confronting huge amounts of scientific evidence about the effects of alcohol. In short, skilled tasks and alcohol arent compatible. Alcohol from the first drink has a marked deterioration on performance. Alcohol never increases performance it always has a negative effect. Not accepting this simple fact is a lack of professionalism.

A post from airliners.net. If this is accurate and it were me the lawsuits would be flying.

This has been dealt with internally, and the crewmember has already been cleared using a blood test. But, that wouldn't get into the news.

Oddly enough, we have been told that the breath test at LHR has a 7% FALSE positive rate!

Maybe if airlines started charging the authorities for delayed and canceled flights for spurious accusations, then they might get something a bit more accurate. Or better yet ... have a blood test result quicker than SIX WEEKS!

Air Canada's staff physician did the required blood test within 4 hours and the crew member positioned home through YYZ.

Blah Blah Blah... same old cr*p ... all this since yesterday... Hand wringing... tut tut tut... Ohhh... My God... Blah Blah Blah.
Don't mistake the Law for Justice... they often have only a passing aquaintance....
Fatigue is way WAY worse than a small amount of residual alcohol yet the FAA recently decided not to pursue that problem because of their own close association with the airlines....
How many accidents have been caused in part by fatigue ? Too many to even guess at.... How many have been caused in part by alcohol... I can't think of any outside of a few PPL events.

I've probably come close to broaching the time limit for the 'bottle to throttle' rule on more than one occasion... days and days of 4 and 5 sector schedules that get you into a hotel at midnight having had no dinner and the adrenalin still pumping... and you need to be asleep bloody fast so take a dip into a 'miniture' scotch or whatever...

If a security guy is exhaling alcohol fumes, they will not be aware of alcohol on the breath of anyone else. Whilst a minor degree of inebriation is probably not an impediment to handing out trays for articles to go through a scanner, it is unlikely to enhance the ability to interpret the output from the scanner. So if you suspect alcohol in the security bloodstream, report it!

Fatigue is terrible, its effect upon your ability to calculate or recognise mistakes, i.e. Judgement, is profound, & quite surprising in how bad it can be.

I've seen, & personally experienced this many times over 20 years of shift work.

I'll be the first to sympathise with this Captain, as it can be very hard to recognise or feel changes in your body when you are rota'd or sleep deprived.

There is quite a difference in my body's ability to deal with alcohol at different times in that shift pattern.

Figure that lot out if you're clever enough, I'm not.

This thread has indeed gone the way of all before it. Strong opinions and not a lot of common sense in some quarters.

I particularly like the ex-military buffoon who thinks that plundering the emergency O2 will somehow mitigate the effects of the bender the night before. I can only assume that the military drinking culture is alive and well.

Comparing the effects of alcohol and fatigue is peurile. One is (unfortunately) legal, the other isn't.

Of course there haven't been many (any?) accidents attributable to alcohol in the West. 99.9% of pilots are responsible and understand the rules. Should we then allow the rest to do what they want? The aircraft won't automatically fall out of the sky with a slightly under-the-weather pilot at the helm, but years of experience have taught us about the Swiss cheese effect. maybe it should be possible to ADD a pilot.

Yes, there are inconsistencies and fatigue, sickness and stress can all be as debilitating as the lingering after-effects of a few beers the night before. Doesn't matter in this case.

The point, to me at any rate, is what right-thinking PROFESSIONAL pilot would risk his or her career by flouting a rule when we all know that many security people are lining up to try and catch us out?

I also have a bit of trouble believing that the Police would take such drastic action unless they were pretty much convinced by the evidence before them.

The only sensible (personal) rule is no drink within 24 hours of commencing flying. if you can't manage to enjoy yourself without booze... well...

Lots of hysteria as usual here. I don't see what was wrong with 8 hours bottle to throttle.


But of course that was back when our judgement was trusted..


I have had security people lean in so close to my face when passing through a check point I have had to tell them to back off, (unless she wants to give me her number)


As a precaution I have carried a small electronic breath detector with me for years so if I suspect others the problem can be preempted.


I limit myself to 2 glasses of wine these days but just to be sure I test myself as well before leaving the hotel. Maybe paranoid but who knows !

Two things haven't been mentioned. The great difference between fatigue and blood alcohol is that the latter is easy to measure accurately and devices for doing so are everywhere. Hence the concentration on alcohol levels.
The other matter is that legislation necessarily has adopted a one size fits all alcohol level. If I intend to drink more than one pint of beer at the pub I take a taxi. Not that two pints of beer would put me over the driving limit but simply as a matter of self preservation. Alcohol affects me more than the average person. Contrast this with a particular driver in the Le Mans 24 hour race. First his co-driver wrote their car off so he was free to attended the pre-race party. After four hours sleep he was told that his opposite number in the other car had broken his arm so he would be driving after all. Judging that to attempt to sober up in time would be futile he treated his hangover with coffee and brandy. He and his co-driver won the race. He cannot have been very impaired. Nevertheless rules are rules and it is foolish to break them.

BarbiesBoyfriend

Here below the driving limits for the various European Countries...as you can see UK is well above the average of Europe...

0.0 per mg – Estonia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary
0.2 per mg – Norway, Poland, Sweden
0.4 per mg - Lithuania
0.5 per mg - Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Germany (Germany is 0.3 if you’re in an accident), Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Serbia/Montenegro, Croatia, Latvia, Macedonia, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Cyprus (North)
0.8 per mg – UK, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland
0.9 Cyprus (South)

As a "Lawyer" you should be able to make difference between "the" and "a" Pilot!!!:=

Please understand i am not talking about specific individuals (as always: "Innocent until proved guilty")