"Screeners at airport target drinking pilots"

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

Screeners at airport target drinking pilots
3 incidents in Arkansas prompt security chief to push for new state law 
By Sylvia Adcock
Newsday


Jerry Henderson was fed up. 

It was January, and for the third time in six months, an airline pilot had
shown up for work at Little Rock National Airport reeking of alcohol. 

As the federal security director for commercial airports in Arkansas,
Henderson oversees hundreds of screeners who work for the Transportation
Security Administration. Their job is to keep weapons and bombs off
airplanes. Henderson and his employees have found themselves on the front
lines of another battle: protecting the public from pilots who have been
drinking. 

On Jan. 26, the pilot of a flight from Little Rock who was suspected of
being intoxicated initially refused to take a blood-alcohol test. He failed
a field sobriety test, and police said he had a strong odor of alcohol
despite eating a number of Altoids breath mints. 

By the time a Breathalyzer was administered, more than two hours had
elapsed. The pilot passed - but Henderson believes the delay in testing
could be the reason for that result. 

At one point, Henderson said, he called in a state trooper, who told him
that if the pilot had been driving a car, he would have been in jail. 

That prompted Henderson to begin pushing state officials to change the state
law in Arkansas to make it easier to get law enforcement involved when an
airline pilot suspected of being intoxicated shows up for work. 

"I was very frustrated," he said. "We've got a moral obligation to make sure
the public is protected. ... The local police need to be able to address it,
and I didn't feel like there was a mechanism to do that." 

Under the old state law, pilots were prohibited from flying with a
blood-alcohol level of more than 0.04 percent, the cutoff established by the
Federal Aviation Administration. But police could make an arrest only if the
pilot was in control of the plane, on the ground or in the air. 

Under the new law enacted this spring, it's a crime for an airline pilot to
even show up at the screening checkpoint with more than 0.04 percent
blood-alcohol in his system. 

"When a commercial pilot presents himself to the security checkpoint under
the influence, it becomes a police matter," said Henderson. "It allows us to
push it out of the cockpit." 

In addition, the new law makes it a felony for an airline pilot who is
carrying a weapon under the government's new armed-pilot program to have
more than 0.04 percent blood-alcohol content. That law is believed to be the
first of its kind in the nation. 

The incidents at Little Rock began last August, when the pilot of a US
Airways Express flight to Charlotte, N.C., was stopped by screeners. The
pilot registered 0.06 percent blood-alcohol, above the FAA's legal limit.
His license was revoked by the FAA and he was fired by Mesa Air, which
operated the US Airways Express flight. 

The second instance occurred in October. "We have reason to believe another
pilot came through impaired," Henderson said. He would not provide details,
but said the pilot got on the plane and flew it. 

"It wasn't handled correctly, and I'll leave it at that," he said. 

In the third instance, screeners alerted police when the pilot of an
American Airlines flight to St. Louis came through the checkpoint smelling
of alcohol. 

"His eyes were bloodshot and glassy and the intoxicant odor was strong," a
Little Rock police officer wrote in a report. The blood-alcohol test
administered two hours after he was confronted registered only a small
amount of alcohol.


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