Crew members grounded after testing positive on alcohol tests

Crew members in India and the Netherlands were grounded after testing positive for alcohol.

In Mumbai, India pre-flight alcohol tests on New Year’s Eve showed that three cabin crew members and one co-pilot were under the influence of alcohol. The Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) reported that “At present, they cannot operate a flight for three months. We are going through records of previous offenders. If any of them feature in that list, their licence would be cancelled.”

The DGCA had conducted similar surprise checks on December 25, 2011. However, none of 333 flight attendants and pilots tested then were found to be under the influence of alcohol.

On January 2, 2012 a cabin attendant of a U.S. airline was not allowed to fly when a test showed a blood alcohol concentration of 0,48 permille (0.048 percent) with a legal limit of 0,2 permille. She was fined 1000 Euros and grounded for twelve hours.

Sources: Hindustan Times; De Volkskrant

 

Cabin crew stop ‘drunk’ pilots from flying

The cabin crew of Aéromexico Flight AM 657 stopped their flight crew from flying because they seemed drunk.

The incident happened on March 12, 2011 while flight AM657 was being prepared for departure from San Juan (SJO/MROC), Costa Rica to Mexico City. According to authorities the co-pilot tested positive for alcohol while the captain refused to do the test.

A replacement crew was flown in to fly the Boeing 737-700 back to Mexico.

 

Ukraine: crew allegedly over alcohol limits

Two Ukrainian crew members were not allowed to carry out a flight from Simferopol to Kiev because their blood-alcohol concentration was above legal limits.
The Ukraine Ministry of Transport and Communications reported in a news release that the level of alcohol in the flight engineer’s blood was 0.75 pro mil and that of flight attendant 0.57 pro mil, with the maximum legal amount being 0.2 pro mil.
The crew were supposed to operate a Dnieproavia/Donbassaero Yakovlev 42 on March 9, 2010, on flight UDN398 from Simferopol Airport (SIP/UKFF) to Kiev-Borispol Airport (KBP/UKBB).
In a statement, Donbassaero claimed it was unreasonable to subject this crew to an alcohol test at 11:00 because of the time between the test and the intended departure time. Under mandatory rest requirements, the flight could take place no earlier than midday, according to Donbassaero.