Drunk pilots to be grounded

By SCOTT MACLEOD and NZPA

Air safety regulators are working on a law change to help them prosecute pilots who fly while drunk.

The move comes amid the dropping of charges against a former Eagle Air pilot who allegedly vomited in his cockpit after a drinking binge and car crash.

The case exposed two loopholes in aviation law - that there is no legal alcohol limit for pilots, and that it is hard to prosecute them using breath tests taken by motorway police.

Judge Cecile Rushton ruled in December that a breath test of pilot Brad Stuart Mulcahy was inadmissible because it was taken under the Land Transport Act - which does not apply to aircraft.

Defence lawyer Barry Hart successfully argued in Auckland District Court last Friday that the charge of causing unnecessary danger to passengers on a Metroliner aircraft on October 1, 1999, should be quashed.

Mulcahy was alleged to have drunk alcohol at a function and crashed his car on the way home. A police breath test taken at 12.43 am found that he had 743 micrograms of alcohol a litre of breath - nearly twice the legal limit of 400.

Less than eight hours later, at 8.20 am, Mulcahy flew a Metroliner from Wellington to Gisborne. Judge Rushton said Mulcahy became sick when the aircraft was 14km from Gisborne. The captain took control of the aircraft as Mulcahy vomited.

The quashed charges were laid by the Civil Aviation Authority. Spokesman Martyn Gosling said yesterday that his group was working on a recommendation that would let breath tests taken under one act be used to lay charges under another.

"At the moment you could be breath tested for driving a car, get in a plane or supertanker and crash it, and the results of the test would not be available in court," he said.

Mr Gosling said he could recall only one other case of drink flying in the past five years, when a Rangiora pilot crashed a helicopter. No breath test was taken, but people who refused to fly with him gave evidence in court.

He was unable to say when the recommendations would be made to change the law.

Eagle Air is a subsidiary of Air NZ. A spokesman for both airlines, Cameron Hill, said Mulcahy was immediately stood down after the incident and opted to resign.

There were slight policy differences between airlines in the Air NZ group, but the general rule was that pilots were forbidden to drink alcohol within 10 hours of flying. Nor were they allowed to fly while "influenced or impaired" by alcohol, sedatives, stimulants or narcotics.

Defence lawyer Mr Hart said Mulcahy disputed the CAA allegations, and would "vigorously defend" the other drink-driving charges laid by police, which are yet to be heard.

Those charges have taken nearly two years to be heard because they are part of an ongoing tussle between lawyers and police for access to details of alcohol-testing machines.

Many other countries have legal alcohol limits for pilots. A United States DC9 co-pilot for Northwest Airlines was fired in January after failing two blood tests for alcohol.

* The pilot and owner of a light aircraft that crashed in North Canterbury last December, killing all three aboard, was probably not fit to hold a licence, the Transport Accident Investigation Commission says.

Pilot Nicholas Derek Rivers, aged 31, and passengers Stacey Ann Fomison, 31, and Ben William Fairbairn, 26, of Christchurch, died instantly when the single-engine aircraft plunged into a rocky gorge near Mt Leslie in the Amuri Range on December 19. In an accident report issued yesterday, the commission found that Mr Rivers "displayed characteristics that were not conducive to safe aviation." Information was available to make the Civil Aviation Authority aware that Mr Rivers was probably unsuitable to hold a pilot's licence "possibly as early as 1991," the commission found.

But the report noted current CAA procedures should assist in identifying and dealing with such people.

Mr Rivers had suffered head injuries and was unconscious for 20 minutes after a serious motor accident in September 1990. Although he was aware of his requirement to notify the CAA of his injuries, there was no evidence of his doing so.