Conviction Of Dui=loss Of Pilots License?
- Thread starter night-ice
- Start date
A320 Driver
Veteran
- Aug 24, 2002
- 3,358
- 2,319
And they will! We are even asked about it when we get new medical certificates every 6 months.
nycbusdriver
Veteran
I'm not sure the feds would pull a pilot's medical automatically upon a DUI conviction, but it would certainly create the necessity for LOTS of tap dancing by the pilot and his/her very expensive lawyer. If the DUI was the result of a pattern of similar arresgt, then the pilot's medical certificate would be toast for a long time, if not permanently.night-ice said:
It's an unfortunate sign of our times that transgressions in one area make you automatically guilty in others. Many pilots, including me, would think nothing of hopping into the car after downing a beer, but like me, they would never even conceive of the possibility of getting near the cockpit of an airplane, any airplane after that same beer until the required FAR or company time interval had lapsed.
The perception among the feds seems to be that airplanes are just very fast, sophisticated, complicated cars. Therefore, if you are less than responsible at the wheel of a car, you must also be less than responsible at the controls of an airplane. For a chronic alcohol abuser, or an active alcoholic, this may be the case, but not necessarily. For the vast majority of pilots, flying an airplane is as much like driving a car as brain surgery would be to plowing a field. They are just two totally different things, and they are approached in two totally different ways with totally different attitudes.
