Airline Pilots Under the Influence

Posted by: Justin Bachman on February 10, 2009

For the past couple of weeks, the story of the “drunk” Aeroflot pilot has been making splashes far and wide across the Internet and newspapers. These inebriated aviator incidents occur periodically, with tinctures of truth and hype mixed into the shock with which we read them. The Dec. 28 flight from Moscow to New York was delayed more than four hours after Capt. Alexander Cheplevsky reportedly slurred his way through a preflight introduction, alarming passengers and setting up a dispute with other crew members, who insisted that Cheplevsky was fit to fly. Ultimately, a new crew was summoned and the flight departed for JFK.

Naturally, for many people this incident brings to mind the worst of Soviet-era laxity toward airline safety. Aeroflot was also ridiculed in many of the accounts for suggesting that the modern Boeing 767 could practically fly itself and that with a three-person pilot staff for the ten-hour flight, one pilot’s subpar condition was no cause for alarm. A reporter for the Moscow Times, who was a passenger on the flight, wrote this report last week for The Guardian. The airline, part of the Delta-Air France-led SkyTeam alliance, issued a statement saying it takes the incident very seriously.

Cheplevsky, 55, was taken to a clinic for tests and found to be suffering from high blood pressure – and may have suffered a stroke in the cockpit during the preflight checks, Lev Koshlyakov, Aeroflot’s deputy director general, said in a telephone call Feb. 10. The pilot, a 20-year Aeroflot veteran with a prior unmarred record, remains at home in Moscow under medical treatment. It is not yet known whether he will be cleared to resume flying, Koshlyakov said. “Definitely he was not drinking and there is absolutely no question about that,” Koshlyakov says. The airline thinks Cheplevsky’s “poor command of English” and habit of speaking slowly, coupled with the onset of whatever struck him, led the passengers to believe he was intoxicated, Koshlyakov said.

In the U.S., airline pilots certainly don’t drink any less than the rest of us, but they do have stricter rules governing them about it. Even the passenger-beloved Southwest (LUV) had a “drunk pilot” scare Jan. 7 in Columbus before a flight to Orlando. That pilot, whom Southwest says did not technically report for duty the day he was found in a reportedly disheveled state, was not disciplined after an FAA probe. He is back flying. “We’re no different than the rest of the population and amongst pilots there will be some with problems,” says Capt. Sam Mayer, an MD-80 pilot for American (AMR). No one wants an impaired pilot in the cockpit risking lives, but it’s worth remembering how rare these instances are and how well the federal medical-certification protocols work in making sure pilots are fit.

American, Southwest, and most others, have employee-assistance programs for those with chemical and mental health issues to obtain treatment. As Mayer notes, most pilots are dealing with a new career world since 2001. Over the past eight years, Chapter 11 airline restructuring has eliminated pensions and chopped wages by as much as 50% at some carriers. Tougher work rules mean that monthly flying schedules are not nearly as plush as they once were, and the threat of a furlough is never far off in these uncertain economic times. That’s the kind of stress that can contribute to chemical problems.

Mayer says the AMR employee-assistance program works exceedingly well, both for American – which can rehabilitate and retain a pilot on whom it has spent enormous sums training – and for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents American’s 12,000 pilots. “It’s one of the few areas where we actually cooperate very well between the pilots and the union,” he said.