.
.So a total of only 15 incidents in 4½ years. :D

.

Heliport, I think you mean only fifteen IDENTIFIED incidents reported by the Press. Who knows how many others were either identified and dealt with without the Press being aware of them or, worse, not identified at all.

DX Wombat

I meant what I said and said what I meant.
I was responding to a specific post which referred to a specific study.

If you want to engage in speculation that's your choice.

Heliport

As 100% detection and 100% action and 100% press reporting is extremly remote, DX Wombat is right to add "IDENTIFIED".

However you have failed to read the research and have the wrong number of incidents.

Did you notice some incidents involved multiple pilots? Scary.

Shell Management I didn't fail to read the research but I did get my maths wrong: I should have said 11 incidents in 4½ years, not 15.
Re the your other point - I have nothing to add to what I've already said. You are free to speculate if you wish to do so.

Yes, I noticed some incidents involved multiple pilots. However, I don't share your view that the findings are "scary". When I travel with an airline I regard the risk of one or more of the pilots being under the influence of alcohol as so minuscule that it doesn't scare me in the slightest.

H.

17 is 50% greater than 11.
You might not take this safety problem seriously but there is no reason to distort the data.

SM

From the research: "During the study period, newspapers reported on a total of 13 incidents of alcohol violations involving 17 pilots. All but two of the incidents occurred during January 2002 through June 2006."

Accordingly, 13-2, the study found 11 incidents in 4½ years.
Even counting pilots rather than incidents, the figure is still tiny: 17 in the 16½ years studied (Jan 1990 - June 2006).

I don't accept there is a "problem".
I am fully aware that, on extremely rare occasions, airline pilots are found to be over the legal limit but I'm entirely satisfied that the overwhelming majority do not drink and fly.
If anecdotes are to be believed, more used to. However, the chances of detection and attitudes towards drinking and flying have both changed. It may well be that the former is a contributing factor to the latter. There is certainly a greater understanding that drinking excessively the previous night may leave a pilot over the legal limit the next day.
.

If you want to engage in speculation that's your choice. However, the report clearly states that 2 incidents were identified between Jan 1990 and Dec 2001, and 11 incidents between Jan 2002 and June 2006. Quite a dramatic increase in rate of incidents over time.

Come on guys! Get real! Do any of you suppose that even one in a hundred over-the-limit pilots are detected? One in a thousand maybe? And when the howls of indignant fury over that statement have died down I'll explain why I'm confident those figures are credible.
Using the 11/17 pilots figure to define the extent of the issue is like trying to define the size of the drugs problem from the number of busts, it that isn't even scratching the surface and everyone knows it.

Just as everyone knows that boozing and flying is neither acceptable nor excusable. Go read loss of licence insurance terms to see what the (medically related) insurance industry thinks of alcohol self-abuse, I assure you it is far from charitable.

It is self inflicted, and it is voluntary. It is therefore no-one else's fault.

I agree. Those detected are just the tip of the iceberg.

Agaricus bisporus and Shell Management thank you, that is precisely the point I was trying to make when I said the incidents were only the ones which had been identified.

etrang

You are confusing anecdotal evidence and speculation.
They are very different.


It is important to understand that an increase in recorded activity does not necessarily reflect an increase in the activity.
eg An increase in the number of prosecutions for a particular offence does not necessarily mean that the offence is being committed more often. More active detection and/or stricter enforcement frequently results in a significant reduction in the offending - which is the objective.

FL

etrang Ten out of ten for misleading use of statistics.

Most recent instances of pilots being "snagged" seem to have originated by reports from security staff at screening points. Look back to pre to 9/11 days and consider how often a pilot would be come into "intimate" contact with security staff; for those that don't know pre 9/11 it was possible in many parts of the world for Flight Crew to access the ramp and their aircraft without going through any security screening, something utterly impossible now. I'd suggest the sampling percentage has gone up since 9/11 and a raw comparison of the number of violations in the 90s verses those in more recent years is utterly meaningless.

So clearly better monitoring techniques would help. Why not a breathlyser too?

I am tired of this hypocrisy. Alcoholics do not have the God-given right because of their "disease" to turn up drunk, take the controls of an airplane and fly it. As an SLF I do not deserve to die because the colleagues of an alcoholic refrain from knocking him off duty. Alcoholics have the right to ask for treatment, which can then be administered while they are provisionally placed in a non-flying paid position and dry out, or they can change jobs and continue to indulge.

edmundronald

Spot on. And if they cchoose to chance it, rigorous monitoring and stiff enforcement is necessary. The Soviet Union certainly knew how to prevent drunk pilots taking to the air.

Or retire from the flight deck and take up a position in management, like the great sm.

For whom it seems the pressure has become too great.

With your motor mouth going off on every thread, you make it look like you are either an arrogant, sad lonely old git or have had quite a few too many on a quiet Sunday afternoon there in Scheveningen...or probably both.

In fact why don't you do us all a favour and head down to Scheveningen pier and jump off the end?

JD

And thank you for your contribution too;)

Water Pollution standards in Cloggie-land?
 

You folks who posit a vast number of drunken pilots who escape detection... do you assume that alcohol abuse is rampant in society at large too? The wife burns your toast so that you think she must have been getting at the cooking sherry again? (Actually, marriage to some of you lot would probably drive any reasonable person to drink so that I better drop that one as an example.)

There is an obvious problem with alcohol abuse in aviation; one drunken pilot is one too many. That said, I think that there are controls in place to detect the abusers. There are also programs in place to help those with problems who want to be helped and other programs to get people out of aviation who do not want to be helped.

There are many things that we do not test for at the 100% level. To ensure the level of safety some of you seem to want (really: pose as wanting) would mean a battery of tests, including psychological testing, before each and every flight. Hey, Captain Bloggs says he's just off to use the toilet on a stop-over at Podunk International; in reality he might be doing lines of coke off his charts there in the toilet stall. Or, he gets a call from the wife that some woman named FiFi called up to say that she is pregnant, when he suddenly turns suicidal... Whatever.

As things now stand we just assume, for the most part, that these people in positions of responsibility will act responsibly. My God! It is almost as if we allow just anybody, anytime, to take the wheel of a car and race down the road just inches from a head-on collision with no checks on that at all. Oh, wait....

Well all sorts of substance abuse needs to be considered.

At least there are drugs dogs at airports!;)