1.05.2010

Airline Pilots Can Drink Before Flying?

(01-05) 06:17 PST LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --

A United Airlines pilot who was pulled from his trans-Atlantic flight to Chicago shortly before takeoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to being above the alcohol limit for flying a plane.
...
A blood test performed shortly after the breath test also showed that Washington had 50 milligrams of alcohol in 100 milliliters of blood. The limit for pilots is 20 milligrams. the legal limit for driving a car is 80 milligrams.
That seems a little odd.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can't have had anything within the prior eight hours. If you drank something before that, the 0.2% rule is still in effect.

Negocios Loucos said...

But seriously you'd need to down A LOT of booze for eight hours later to have that much still in your system wouldn't you?

reddog said...

I got a friend learned to fly running bales of weed across the border to Texas. Did hard time. Convicted felon.

After he got out, he got a job flying for a big trans continental freight hauler. They got bought up by a major airline and he got grandfathered in.

He's been hauling passengers to Tokyo for 20 years. I don't think he drinks. There's probably lots of other stuff in his blood. He's never crashed except that one time in Texas and that was a mechanical problem. He walked away from that but not very far.

Anonymous said...

8 hours from bottle to throttle

http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/nasa-bottle-to-throttle-time-12-hours.html

unless you are flying the space shuttle - nasa is more strict.


§91.17 Alcohol or drugs.

(a) You're not allowed to be a pilot or crewmember if
(1) you've been drinking within the past 8 hours,
[8 hours from bottle to throttle. Pass out wearing glasses
and the glasses look like a figure eight.]
(2) you are still under the influence of alcohol,
(3) you've taken something that impairs your faculties,
(4) or if there's .04 percent by weight or more alcohol in your
blood.
[Point at Dracula's Open mouth with his 4 fangs.]

(b) No drunk or stoned passengers allowed on the plane unless it's
a medical patient under proper case.

Jeff

Happy Super Tuesday!