New law fails to impose flight ban on airline pilots caught drinking

Airline pilots caught be drunk on duty may be able to exploit a loophole in new legislation and keep flying. Although a Transport Safety Act, to come into force next year, gives police the power to breathalyse flight crew and gives courts the power to fine or imprison, it fails to provide a mechanism for withdrawing a pilot's licence.

The Department for Transport confirmed yesterday that unlike the laws on motoring, the new law meant to clamp down on "drinking and flying", did not require courts to notify the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the industry's safety regulator, of a conviction. Only the CAA has the power to stop a pilot flying by withdrawing medical certification.

Industry sources confirmed yesterday that flight crew dismissed for drinking before reporting for duty, were often able to find employment elsewhere "within weeks". Pilots sacked from a big airline might reappear on the flight deck working for a lesser-known charter or freight company. The new law does not necessarily stop that happening, said Robert Gifford, director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, a charitably funded watchdog.

"It is clearly not satisfactory to expect the CAA to hear of such incidents through the media or by chance. The travelling public has a right to know justice will be followed through a complete process. I hope Parliament will look again at the issue to ensure that the law is adequate for these, albeit rare, cases."

At the weekend, a Virgin Atlantic pilot was arrested in Washington DC while preparing to fly a jumbo jet to Britain with 383 passengers after he had been allegedly drinking.

Captain Richard Harwell, 55, an American who lives with his family in Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, was due to appear at a bail hearing yesterday to be formally accused of the offence. He faces a jail sentence of up to five years if convicted. He was arrested after airport staff smelt alcohol on his breath.

In Britain, the Railways and Transport Safety Act, which comes into effect early next year, sets a limit for pilots of 20 milligrams in 100 millilitres of blood, a quarter of the drink-drive limit. Police are given powers to conduct tests on "reasonable suspicion".

But there is no provision for random testing. British Airways has been trying to introduce such a system for nearly three years but it has been resisted by the British Airline Pilots' Association (Balpa).

The union says random tests have "serious flaws" and fail to protect passengers. Balpa said that in the United States where random testing and a "peer intervention programme" ran for 10 years, only 80 out of 80,000 pilots failed tests. But 550 had been named, helped and returned to work under the peer pressure scheme.

Detecting the problem and dealing with it, rather than catching the odd individual and punishing them, is at the heart of the peer pressure system, the union believes.

Eric Appleby, the chief executive of Alcohol Concern said it was "astonishing" that Balpa was opposing random testing. "These pilots are responsible for the safety of hundreds of people at a time," he said. "The idea that pilots should be exempt from this kind of test when others such as rail drivers are not, seems incredible."