Drunk flight crew members will now have a hard time evading authorities, as a new and effective testing instrument will be used during the Pre-Flight Medical Examination (PFME). After conducting a trial run for Alco Sensor IV from January to March this year, the number of detections went up to 45 compared to 15 for the same period in 2011.
Officials of the DGCA have decided to discontinue the use of its predecessor, Alco Sensor III, and also issued a notice to all the airlines on May 8 asking them to switch over to Alco IV with immediate effect. The notice also states that the samples collected with Alco III were unreliable and were subject to the airline doctor’s judgment.
Hence, the equipment could not detect alcohol positive cases at times.
Before every flight, airline cabin crew and pilots have to undergo the PFME, which is conducted by a doctor appointed by the airline. A senior DGCA official said Alco IV also has a provision for a printout of the test report. “Filing of the PFME reports to the DGCA office becomes easy when a printout can be taken,” he said.
Conducting the PFME falls under the purview of the DGCA’s Directorate of Flight Safety. The regulator’s flight safety rules apparently have a stringent “no tolerance” policy i.e., there is not even a “permissible limit” for alcohol consumption.
Another official from the DGCA’s medical cell added that crew members can no longer resort to the age-old trick of holding the breath to avoid getting detected as being drunk. “Alco IV will not work unless it senses air is being blown into the pipe,” said the official. DGCA chief E.K. Bharat Bhushan said that the decision was taken when he looked at some of the PFME reports during Christmas Eve last year. “No pilot or cabin crew was detected to be under the influence of alcohol. This seemed too good to be true since it is a time when alcohol is consumed on a large scale. This is when I started doubting Alco III’s efficiency,” he said.