One advantage to the changes in airport security

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Pilot Suspected of Drinking Before Flight

WASHINGTON (AP) - A veteran Virgin Atlantic Airways pilot was in a Virginia jail Saturday facing a charge that he showed up drunk to fly a planeload of almost 400 passengers to London.

The airline said Richard George Harwell, 55, an American living in England, had a spotless record during 14 years as a Virgin pilot.

``He was suspended with immediate effect pending an internal investigation,'' said John Riordan, a Virgin Atlantic spokesman.

Police at Washington Dulles International Airport in suburban Virginia seized Harwell aboard Virgin Atlantic Flight 22 on Friday night after being summoned by the Transportation Security Administration, whose screeners had detected alcohol on Harwell's breath, said Tara Hamilton, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

He was interrogated at the airport, arrested and charged under Virginia law with operating an aircraft while under the influence of an intoxicating drug or alcohol and jailed at the Loudoun County Detention Center, Hamilton said. She said Harwell will be arraigned at a bail hearing Monday on the charge punishable by as much as five years in prison and a $500 fine.

Riordan said the Boeing 747-400 was to leave on the flight to London's Heathrow Airport Saturday night after a 23-hour delay. Its 383 passengers were put up in area hotels, Riordan said.

In London, Virgin Atlantic spokesman Paul Moore said Harwell had a ``completely unblemished record'' with the airline. ``We will be talking to him and the authorities over the coming weeks to find out what has happened,'' Moore said.

Moore added, ``It's the first time it has happened in the 20 years we've been operating and is totally out of character for Captain Harwell, who is an extremely experienced and popular pilot.''

The airline is ``at a loss to explain what has happened,'' Moore said.

Federal Aviation Agency spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency, which licenses pilots to fly within the United States, will carry out a civil investigation parallel to the Virginia state criminal probe to determine Harwell's status.

``The two investigations are not really related, except they relate to the same incident,'' Brown said. A pilot must have a valid airman's certificate - a pilot's license - and medical certificate to operate commercial aircraft in the United States, she said.

In such cases as the Dulles incident, she said, the medical certificate might be revoked if the pilot were found to have been medically unfit to fly.

I wonder how frequent this has been in the past?

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It is indeed a new source of terror.
We will have to kill them all, so our fear will not get out of hand.

Such terrorists should not be tolerated, even when everyone is capable of scaring us.

Got any good news? Any good role models or good things for people to do? I'm tired of being a sheep to the media, that's all.

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PatriUgg wrote:

It is indeed a new source of terror.
We will have to kill them all, so our fear will not get out of hand.

Such terrorists should not be tolerated, even when everyone is capable of scaring us.

Got any good news? Any good role models or good things for people to do? I'm tired of being a sheep to the media, that's all.

What?

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The idea of terrorism is so overused
that I can't help but be sarcastic about it.

How much fear will people spread in the media, just to make people jump?

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In fact, far from being inconvenienced by airport security, i do in fact feel safer for it. It ought to have been implemented long ago, after the first hi-jackings by Palestinian, or Palestinian sympathetic hijackers in the 1970's. I am not certain that it would have stopped Mohammed Atta and his cohorts, but we can never know, because airport security was a joke until quite recently--an ugly, lethal joke, perpetrated upon the public by the airline corporations and airport authorities. When i'm in a rush, or a bad mood, i get aggrevated with them. But i can only honestly charge that to my own childishness.

I have read for many, many years, allegations that drug and alcohol abuse, particularly alcohol abuse, by pilots has been ignored or swept under the carpet. I'm glad to see this. I do not wish Mr. Harwell ill, and hope that he can deal quickly and effectively with whatever problem, one hopes transitory, which lead to the incident. Nonetheless, i prefer to think the flight crew is sober; just as i would not drive drunk, nor wish to ride with a drunk driver.

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PatriUgg wrote:

The idea of terrorism is so overused
that I can't help but be sarcastic about it.

How much fear will people spread in the media, just to make people jump?

Errrr....are you aware there is nothing about terrorism in the article? I find it helpful to read more than just the title of a thread, myself, but to each their own. Very Happy

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Airport security... My apologies, as I misinterpreted the purpose of airport security as having to do with terrorism.

Why is there such interest in airport security? Why? Isn't there a large degree of hype there, because even when I fly these days it's very clear that the security measures can easily be bypassed!

It's like spending millions of dollars for a two-dollar lock on your front door. A determined person acting with intent can easily kick it in. The only reason I can rationally understand these measures is that we can *say* that we spent millions of dollars on it.

That's the only explanation I can find. It seems very important to fool the public into thinking that we've solved the issue, when all we've done is created nice-sounding excuses and sold them more stuff. Sorry, I'm just not buying the hype, and that's why I think this article is just more noise.

I gaurentee there is a drunk pilot flying a plane at this very moment. It's statistically inevitable -- but not so important that someone would give them a simple breathalyzer before each flight.

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Okay, and another thread killed by obtuseness... Rolling Eyes

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I find it helpful to read the posts, myself, but to each their own. Laughing

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PU, i would suggest that your closing statement above is cavalier in the extreme. I would welcome a move to assure that every member of a flight crew were given a breathalyzer test before emplaning. I am also mystified by your remarks about airport security. It may not be perfect, but i cannot for a moment agree that "security measures can easily be bypassed." I wouldn't wish to categorically state that they cannot be bypassed, but i cannot accept a claim that it would be easy. At the very least, the measures deter the casual nut-case; in many cases, i think current measures would significantly increase the degree of difficulty in boarding a plane with any description of offensive weapons. In an interview of the head of the Transportation Safety Administration's responsible officer broadcast by NPR, she stated that more than 15,000 box cutters were confiscated in 2002. I don't recall how many knives were taken, but it was in the thousands.

HB is right, you're being obtuse. I consider it perfectly reasonable to take any steps consistent with civil liberties to assure that flight crew are sober.

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PatriUgg wrote:

I find it helpful to read the posts, myself, but to each their own.

My apologies for this comment. It's usually not productive to respond in kind, even to the host of a thread. I'm grumpy today but should set a better example.

I did indeed think the article stems from terrorism. They don't use the word, but is it humanly possible to read the article and not think about terrorists? Isn't that the primary motivating interest that sells the article?

We are here to comment about the article and my contribution is to ask "Why was it published?"

Given that a breathalyzer test would be so easy to implement, the function of this article seems merely to spread security fears, by keeping the public attention on airport security. This is certainly not unique to this article, but I'm sick of such media anyways. Fear is a powerful tool that is much abused by large segments of our society. So I resent reading articles like this when I sense it's only practical function is to keep people worried and easily led around, conditioning the public towards fear. We need useful news, not subtle tabloid fever.

Hence, my obtuse rant about terrorist this and terrorist that.
What would it take for people to stop buying into the widespread marketting of "terrorism"?

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Setanta, I wish I could share your confidence in airport security measures, but one look at the people running the machines and I'm not at all inspired.

The Pretense of Airport Security

Quote:

Do not suppose, however, that the TSA has served no purpose. Primarily, it has served to give the public the impression that the government is "doing something" about airline security. The government is doing a great deal, to be sure; it's just not doing anything that contributes to genuine security. Anyone who spends half an hour thinking about how to commandeer or blow up an airplane can easily come up with a workable plan.

Moon: Fixing airport security starts with removing bumbling bureaucrats

Quote:

Heatwole is the 20 year-old college student who, in a self-described act of ''civil disobedience,'' smuggled box cutters onboard two commercial airliners and hid them in the planes' lavatories, along with matches, bleach and modeling clay shaped like a plastic explosive. Heatwole was attempting to point out serious flaws that exist in airport security screening, and succeeded magnificently. He actually e-mailed the TSA shortly after leaving the materials on the flights, describing in detail what he had done and why (and even supplying his name and phone number). But the TSA ignored the e-mail and nothing was done until the materials were discovered - by accident - onboard the planes, five weeks after Heatwole had placed them there.
...
In mid-October, federal agents successfully smuggled knives, a gun and a bomb past screeners at Boston's Logan Airport, the same airport where two of the planes used in the Sept. 11 attacks departed from (the agents must not have hidden the items in their shoes; the TSA is absolutely fetishistic in its attention to footwear). Undercover agents have cataloged many screening failures at other airports in similar tests recently, but the full results of these tests have been classified. ''You wouldn't want to know,'' says Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Subcommittee on Aviation; the congressman characterized the results of the undercover investigations as ''gruesome.''

Panel: Airport Security Still Has Flaws

Quote:

Undercover federal investigators testing airport security were able to sneak weapons past screeners, the chairman of the House aviation subcommittee said Friday.
[Edit: This despite the fact that ...]
As of Aug. 31, the agency has intercepted more than 8.1 million items at checkpoints, including more than 2.4 million knives, 1,498 firearms and 51,408 box cutters, which were used by the Sept. 11 hijackers. In August, screeners intercepted 602,913 prohibited items.

No plan needed to show airport's security flaws

Quote:

Last Thursday, the head of the TSA testified to Congress that there were still massive problems in airline security. Among them was the inability to find explosives on passengers or on carry-on luggage and inadequate training for airport screeners.

My point is a much larger issue ... that it's not worth worrying about. If drunk pilots were actually a big issue, the solution is easy. You will always be vulnerable, so do what you reasonably can but stop with all the fear already! We cannot let PR hype and the political spin of terrorism dictate our lives, or consume our time.

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Given that, as i believe, HB posted the thread because of the issue of drunken flight crew, i cannot be help wondering why you continue to beat the terrorist drum here. Are you not indulging in exactly that sort of sensationalism which you decry? Given the nearly total lack of airport security before September 11, for whatever flaws currently exist, we're much better off. Inasmuch as i work in the security equipment and systems industry, and know what measures have been taken at our local airport, and given that i know history well enough to know that any endeavor of this sort is likely to stumble along until it muddles through, i remain confident. That bureaucrats bumble, and that administrations are prone to push appearance over substance is no news. The sources you quote are just a guilty of playing on people's fears as you decry others for doing.

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Indeed, yours truly, furry footsies and all, did indeed post wish to talk about pissed pilots. Oh, well.....

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Well, i for one took an interest, HB. This is from the Washington Times:

Number of pilots caught for drunkenness on the rise[/color]

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I think this has a lot to do with changing attitutudes toward alcohol use, as well as increased concern by passengers. What do you think?

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I think that it is rather like the drunk driving issue, but that it lags the other development because it has not been publicly acknowledged. Initiatives against drunk driving had, at first, an uphill battle against the traditional attitude of police officers, which was to follow someone home, or tell them to pull over and sleep it off. But when chiefs of police felt the heat, and put the pressure on patrolmen, they began to crack down.

I personally applaud any efforts which the airlines might make; i will condemn them if they make none. The Washington Post article says that 22 pilots were caught in a random testing of 10,000 pilots--that's 10,000 out of 75,000 pilots the article states are employed in the U.S. As ten is to 75, 22 is to 165. I don't particularly like the thought that there may have been 165 pilots flying drunk in 2002, and that does not cover pilots on international flights. The statistical assertion that airlines are safer than automobiles has never reassured me. I don't care to be on the flight which provides the statistic of disaster. Drunk driving gives me cause for concern, but when i'm behind the wheel, i'm sober, and hope that i can avoid a disasterous encounter with another driver whom is see to be driving erraticly or unsafely. I can't exercise that sort of control when flying, and prefer the standard to approach the absolute as it is possible to achieve. A drunk driver might take out him/herself and few others in the worst case. A drunken pilot making a fatal error can kill hundreds.

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Hobitbob, you wonder how often this has happened, I wonder if he was drunk. The articles offers no evidence one way or the other but does include statements that the pilot had an unblemished record up until now. There are many ways you can end up with traces of alcohol on your breath, as well as marihuana in your blood, without intentionally consuming either. Any idea how this incident turned out?

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I never considered that, but was wondering how a clearly intoxicated pilot would have been received by the balance of the flight crew. They do have a vested interest in flight safety.

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That's one I've often wondered myself. I also wonder how much if this has to do with the differening social norms regarding etoh use in different cultures. In a culture where a beer or glass of wein is acceptable at meal times, without leading to intoxication, would there be a prohibition against such use prior to flying?
On the other hand, I also seem to recall the rule "eight hours bottle to throttle."

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One advantage to the changes in airport security

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