Skywest crew caught drinking, not thinking

When I am drunk at a bar on an overnight and anyone asks what I do I tell them I drive trucks with gas in them. If they hear us talk about airplanes I tell them I fill up airplanes with the gas. If you tell them you a job that is looked down upon they wont ask any more questions because they get embarrassed they are wasting time talking to a lower caste member. If you choose to say you move aluminium tubes around in an attempt to get them to ask more questions and finally you 'spill it' well then congrads you are that guy. Anyway i can't encourage binge drinking enough, especially if your code share partner is flipping the bill.

My two cents.

Last I knew everyone in COU Fridays still thinks Im a truck driver for G.O.D.
 
SkyWest does have a HIMS program, but from what I understand one's life will be far less complicated if they enter the program prior to being caught. If voluntarily entering it (before getting caught), they cover costs, there are no penalties, you won't lose seniority, etc. You can still enter the program after getting caught, but it's not nearly as easy that way.

This really is a shame... I hope the FO will be able to get his life together after this.
 
GypsyPilot said:
SkyWest does have a HIMS program,
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Good

...but from what I understand one's life will be far less complicated if they enter the program prior to being caught.
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You understand correctly.

If voluntarily entering it (before getting caught), they cover costs, there are no penalties, you won't lose seniority, etc.
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This does vary by company, the HIMS Program is REALLY expensive.

You can still enter the program after getting caught, but it's not nearly as easy that way.
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Yep.

This really is a shame... I hope the FO will be able to get his life together after this.
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Yep.
 
Seggy -

Yup!

Some of the hotels will rat you out to operations with catlike quickness.

We have a "traceable amount" rule. So even though the FAA says "ok", the FOM says "later skater" and especially if you've been through the HIMS program and you've relapsed, well, game over.
 
Come in too late, the hotel will rat you out. I think they hand out Boy Scout badges for catching drunk crewmembers in CDG, LHR and especially AMS.

Hell we had a guy who just got out of jail after six or eight months for getting busted in LHR security.

The European limits are a lot lower. The FAA can say ok but the EU says "enjoy tossing salad in jail!" and if you're lucky, you can enter HIMS.
 
Ok, so alcohol absorbtion varies, but sheesh... if it's a 12 hour rule and you blow .35, that was a lot more than 4-6 beers and less than 12 hours.

I love a glass of whiskey, but man, if I've had 2 glasses my wife can smell it on me for over 12 hours. You've got to be careful out there and remember the priorities. We're mostly type A individuals thus highly prone to "addiction." (i.e. very OCD and routine oriented- I don't believe so much in alcohol addiction, I believe it is more behavioral addiction and self control) Remember you fly airplanes to fund your drinking, not the other way around. :)

I didn't see if they broke the threshold of the plane or not... was that specified? That is typically the career ender if you walk on board.
 
GypsyPilot said:
SkyWest does have a HIMS program, but from what I understand one's life will be far less complicated if they enter the program prior to being caught. If voluntarily entering it (before getting caught), they cover costs, there are no penalties, you won't lose seniority, etc. You can still enter the program after getting caught, but it's not nearly as easy that way..
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Unfortunately you don't find many people who admit to having a problem, until they find themselves IN a problem. I'm speaking from the perspective of having an alcoholic family member who got in an accident, hitting a car with 4 people. Up till then, he just liked going out and having a drink in the afternoon.

From my perspective there are a lot of people who are just waiting to have that moment....It would be nice if those who cared for them said something before that happened. I know it's not being "cool."
 
Somebody's lying here. IIRC, the FO said he had four beers over a 6 or 7 hour period? And terminated drinking between 6 and 7 pm? Then reported at 5 am? A similar line for the FA?

Again, IIRC, the average BAC rise for one beverage (1 12 oz beer, 1 glass wine, or 1 shot of hard liquor) is .025. Each drink should push you up .025, which means "4 beers" should be a BAC of .10. The body, on average, processes the alcohol from your system at a rate of .025 per hour. In other words, for every drink, it takes an hour to get rid of it from your body. A .035 BAC means about a drink and a half is left in you.

With "4 beers" consumed, that BAC should have been outprocessed by around 1 AM, not still present at 5 AM. Nearly seventeen hours passed between the FO's reported start of drinking and his arrival at the airport in the morning. Assuming the math I was taught is correct, that's somewhere on the order of 18+ beverages. The math just doesn't check.

As I see it, either this FO is completely frackin' stupid, or things everybody around him is. Same goes for the FA.

(Anybody who has more of the science, please, chime in- this is what I remember from military safety stand-downs when we did real-time experiments with docs and law enforcement.. but from waaaay back. If my data is off, please speak up.)
 
Firebird2XC said:
Somebody's lying here. IIRC, the FO said he had four beers over a 6 or 7 hour period? And terminated drinking between 6 and 7 pm? Then reported at 5 am? A similar line for the FA?

Again, IIRC, the average BAC rise for one beverage (1 12 oz beer, 1 glass wine, or 1 shot of hard liquor) is .025. Each drink should push you up .025, which means "4 beers" should be a BAC of .10. The body, on average, processes the alcohol from your system at a rate of .025 per hour. In other words, for every drink, it takes an hour to get rid of it from your body. A .035 BAC means about a drink and a half is left in you.

With "4 beers" consumed, that BAC should have been outprocessed by around 1 AM, not still present at 5 AM. Nearly seventeen hours passed between the FO's reported start of drinking and his arrival at the airport in the morning. Assuming the math I was taught is correct, that's somewhere on the order of 18+ beverages. The math just doesn't check.

As I see it, either this FO is completely frackin' stupid, or things everybody around him is. Same goes for the FA.

(Anybody who has more of the science, please, chime in- this is what I remember from military safety stand-downs when we did real-time experiments with docs and law enforcement.. but from waaaay back. If my data is off, please speak up.)
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Your math and data are fundamentally accurate. There is an impact to alcohol absorption rates caused by food and to a certain degree by metabolic nuances. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that your BAC doesn't really start coming down until you STOP drinking. In other words, if you're drinking for 4 hours, at the end of the 4th hour, you haven't started eliminating your FIRST drink yet - not fully, anyway.

Right or wrong, I have had some rather unpleasantly detailed exposure to these processes. In my purely anecdotal experience, the accused drinker will invariably admit to an "acceptable" level of consumption to mask the actual level of consumption.

I am personally in the camp that if he's legal, there's no story here. Skywest has a black eye here, and that's what will cause corrective action.

I'm really, really curious as to the CA's opinion at the time.
 
Baronman said:
Maybe a little fuzzy math or recollection on his part?
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"The co-pilot told police that he began drinking at the Hampton Inn and Suites bar at about noon Wednesday and stopped between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. that night, according to the police report. He said he only had four 12-ounce cans of beer, although he admitted it was probably more after the responding officer questioned that claim based on a sobriety test."
 
PeanuckleCRJ said:
Ok, so alcohol absorbtion varies, but sheesh... if it's a 12 hour rule and you blow .35, that was a lot more than 4-6 beers and less than 12 hours.
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It was .035 which is a pretty big difference. I have no doubt he may have only had 6 beers with that low of a BAC but he probably had more if they could smell it. He probably had one or two shots as well.

amorris311 said:
Thank god I don't look like a pilot. Most people don't believe me anyway so I say I'm a Snapple rep and I'm in town to see if razzmatazz is still flying off the shelves.
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I think used car salesman would be more believable. You are probably the most paranoid pilot I know when it comes to drinking on the overnight.
 
killbilly said:
Your math and data are fundamentally accurate. There is an impact to alcohol absorption rates caused by food and to a certain degree by metabolic nuances. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that your BAC doesn't really start coming down until you STOP drinking. In other words, if you're drinking for 4 hours, at the end of the 4th hour, you haven't started eliminating your FIRST drink yet - not fully, anyway.

Right or wrong, I have had some rather unpleasantly detailed exposure to these processes. In my purely anecdotal experience, the accused drinker will invariably admit to an "acceptable" level of consumption to mask the actual level of consumption.

I am personally in the camp that if he's legal, there's no story here. Skywest has a black eye here, and that's what will cause corrective action.

I'm really, really curious as to the CA's opinion at the time.
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Yeah... even if he had consumed what he claimed and outprocessing of the alcohol started at 7 pm, there's no way he consumed what he said he did.

Unless, of course, he didn't actually stop with more than 8 hours until show time. OH.. hey..
So either he got staggering drunk the day before, but somehow had the presence of mind to stop at 7 pm, or he drank well into the evening and by morning, thought he was good.

That's an awful lot of risk to get in an FA's knickers.
 
Firebird2XC said:
Again, IIRC, the average BAC rise for one beverage (1 12 oz beer, 1 glass wine, or 1 shot of hard liquor) is .025. Each drink should push you up .025, which means "4 beers" should be a BAC of .10. The body, on average, processes the alcohol from your system at a rate of .025 per hour. In other words, for every drink, it takes an hour to get rid of it from your body. A .035 BAC means about a drink and a half is left in you.
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Your math is correct. Breathalyzers, however, are not precise laboratory instruments. They estimate a blood alcohol level, by estimating the amount of air in the average lung, estimating how much ETOH on average is aspirated from the blood in the lungs, and estimating the volume of the average breath. So for two people with actual BAC levels of 0.01, one might test at 0.00, one might test at 0.03.

I personally would insist on a blood test.
 
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