Just a quick content note: this week's article includes discussion of drug use, drug-testing policy, and the War on Drugs. If that's not something you want to read, maybe give this week a pass....
Just a quick content note: this week's article includes discussion of drug use, drug-testing policy, and the War on Drugs. If that's not something you want to read, maybe give this week a pass.
This week: the crash of a small regional Metroliner in the Rocky Mountains, the discovery that the captain regularly used cocaine, and how it led to the introduction of random drug testing for pilots.
This means that it was ineffective. There’s no maybe here. It’s either effective or not. And the statistics written show it is ineffective and very much an example of political theater, much like...
pilots? The answer is a solid maybe. Prior to the introduction of the 1988 rule, the FAA highlighted an airline that voluntarily implemented random drug testing and found that 2.5% of its pilots tested positive, but the most common “illicit drug” found was marijuana, which is now legal in many states. The rate of hard drug use was much lower, and it remains so today, which makes gathering any meaningful data almost impossible. Trans-Colorado Airlines flight 2286 remains the only major commercial plane crash linked to illicit drug use by a pilot, although about 4% of private pilots killed in general aviation accidents test positive for illegal drugs. The fact that this number is much less than 4% for airline pilots killed in crashes worldwide suggests that commercial pilots use fewer drugs than private pilots do, but as far as we know, that could have been the case before random drug testing too.
This means that it was ineffective. There’s no maybe here.
It’s either effective or not. And the statistics written show it is ineffective and very much an example of political theater, much like the ineffectiveness of the TSA.
I rather dislike mealy mouthed fence sitters. This is rather obvious in showing that the benefits of the policy didn’t manifest at all and in fact was an answer to a nonexistent problem.
Fatigue, as usual, is the bigger killer. And cannot easily be tested for. Nor can a moral panic be drummed up over tiredness itself. Yet a tired pilot is an incredible threat to their crew and passengers.
Just a quick content note: this week's article includes discussion of drug use, drug-testing policy, and the War on Drugs. If that's not something you want to read, maybe give this week a pass.
This week: the crash of a small regional Metroliner in the Rocky Mountains, the discovery that the captain regularly used cocaine, and how it led to the introduction of random drug testing for pilots.
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This means that it was ineffective. There’s no maybe here.
It’s either effective or not. And the statistics written show it is ineffective and very much an example of political theater, much like the ineffectiveness of the TSA.
I rather dislike mealy mouthed fence sitters. This is rather obvious in showing that the benefits of the policy didn’t manifest at all and in fact was an answer to a nonexistent problem.
Fatigue, as usual, is the bigger killer. And cannot easily be tested for. Nor can a moral panic be drummed up over tiredness itself. Yet a tired pilot is an incredible threat to their crew and passengers.