And from my point of view I don't think having an airline pilot or flight attendant on mood altering drugs is okay. From my point of view a very low dose of LSD might have similar effects in some circumstances, especially just starting a mood altering drug treatment or coming off of a treatment or forgetting to regularly take their medicine. Any one of these times extreme complications sometimes occur. However, all this is just my personal opinion because I don't consider any mood altering drugs actually safe. Instead I see them as a way to avoid the expense of counseling. To me, it would be like getting shot by a gun and instead of removing the bullet just putting a piece of duct tape over it. But this is just my personal opinion.
Begin quote from nytimes.com
Fracas Aloft on JetBlue Flight Shows Gap in Screening
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: March 28, 2012
Reuters
Clayton Osbon, a JetBlue pilot, was removed from the plane after it was diverted to Texas.
On Tuesday, a JetBlue
pilot who was behaving erratically was physically restrained by
passengers after his co-pilot locked him out of the cockpit. With chaos
in the cabin, the plane, flying from New York to Las Vegas, was forced
to make an emergency landing in Amarillo, Tex.
While the airline has said only that the pilot, Clayton Osbon, was
suffering from a “medical condition,” the incident highlighted the
delicate subject of how airlines screen pilots for fitness to fly.
Pilots are required to have annual medical checkups. But these exams,
performed by general medical practitioners, are not always thorough,
some pilots say, and do not typically include psychological evaluations.
The airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration
rely on pilots to voluntarily disclose any physical or mental health
problems they may have or medication they are taking.
Captain Osbon has been employed by JetBlue since June 2000, four months after the airline started operations.
David Barger, the company’s chief executive and president, quickly took
to the airwaves Wednesday, declaring that Captain Osbon was a
“consummate professional” with no earlier problems. He also was a senior
pilot who taught and evaluated standard operating procedures on the
Airbus A320, the airline said.
“I’ve known the captain personally for a long period of time and there’s
been no indication of this at all,” Mr. Barger said in an early-morning
appearance on NBC’s “Today” program.
Mr. Osbon, 49, was charged by federal authorities on Wednesday with
interfering with a flight crew. Under federal law, a conviction could
carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. Mr. Osbon remained under medical
evaluation.
An F.B.I. affidavit filed Wednesday in Federal District Court in
Northern Texas said that Mr. Osbon had told the plane’s first officer
that “we’re not going to Vegas.” The co-pilot “became really worried
when Osbon said, ‘We need to take a leap of faith,’ ” the court document
said. It described a chaotic situation on the plane, with Mr. Osbon
acting erratically, running in the cabin, banging loudly on the cockpit
door after being locked out by the co-pilot and shouting jumbled
comments about “Jesus, September 11th, Iraq, Iran and terrorists.”
The issue of pilot health, which can also include fatigue, is
longstanding. Pilots are screened for medical or psychological problems
before being hired, and are randomly tested afterward for drug and
alcohol use. They must undergo medical examinations once or twice a
year, depending on their age, to keep their certification with the
F.A.A.
Pilots are supposed to disclose all physical and psychological
conditions and medications or face significant fines, which can reach
$250,000, if they are found to have falsified information, the F.A.A.
said.
But some pilots may be reluctant to disclose such information, for fear
of losing their jobs, industry analysts and retired pilots said
Wednesday. Many airlines also have anonymous phone lines for crew
members to report suspicious behavior to professional standards
committees.
Otherwise, airlines rely on the collaborative nature of the business,
which provides constant checks and balances, said Robert W. Mann Jr., an
airline industry analyst and a former executive with major airlines.
“Airlines have ways of monitoring the psychology of their employees
because crew members typically can say, ‘I do not want to fly with Bob,
he’s a jerk,’ ” Mr. Mann said. “If half of the first officers in the
fleet do not want to fly with Bob, flight operation officers would
know.”
Two years ago, the F.A.A. relaxed its longstanding ban on psychiatric
medications for pilots, saying that new drugs for depression had fewer
side effects than older drugs. The agency now grants waivers allowing
pilots to fly while taking Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa or Lexapro, and their generic equivalents.
The F.A.A.’s administrator at the time, J. Randolph Babbitt, said the
agency was relaxing its ban because it was concerned that some pilots
with depression were not being treated, or were being secretive about
it. “We need to change the culture and remove the stigma associate with
depression,” Mr. Babbitt said then.
- 1
- 2
Correction: March 28, 2012
An earlier version of this story, using information provided by the F.A.A., misstated the percentage of pilots with a first-class medical certificate who had been granted a waiver to fly while taking certain psychiatric medications. It is 0.016 percent, not 0.00016.
end quote from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/business/jetblue-incident-raises-questions-about-screening-pilots.html
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