Have one for the runway; how Transportation Department policies add new meaning to the word "red-eye." (drunk pilots)

• Author: Nather, David

How Transportation Department pollicies add new meaning to the world red-eye

On August 1, 1982, Larry W Morrison, a pilot for Northwest Airlines, was scheduled to copilot an early-morning flight out of Las Vegas. He'd been in the city for two nights, having copiloted a flight in from Minneapolis on July 30. He was staying at the Hilton Flamingo Hotel during the layover.

During the 30 hours he was in Las Vegas, Morrison was not inimune to the city's charms. He drank a beer, two double vodkas, a liter of wine, and two pints of vodka straight from the bottle. He finished off the last quarter-pint of vodka as soon as he woke up at 4 a. m.-less than four hours before he was scheduled to climb back in the cockpit.

As his flight crew gathered in the lobby of the Hilton Flamingo, Morrison had John Dill, the flight's captain, paged. I'm too sick to fly, he told Dill. Dill called the airline's scheduling office to try to find a new copilot, but he was told that no one was available so early in the morning. If Morrison couldn't fly, the flight would have to be canceled.

It didn't take long for airline officials to change their minds. As the flight crew boarded the plane, the Northwest station agent at the airport noticed Morrison wasn't looking too good. He told Donald Nelson, Northwest's general manager in Minneapolis, who ordered the plane to stay on the ground. But by the time Nelson's order was received, Northwest Flight 81, a Boeing 727 with 73 passengers and six crew members-including copilot Larry W Morrison-was already in the air.

Northwest, having found a copilot, took Morrison off the plane during a stopover in San Francisco, and gave him a blood test. Morrison's blood alcohol level was 0.13 percent, well above the 0.04 percent level that the Federal Aviation Administration defines as being under the influence. Northwest fired Morrison for breaking the FAAs, as well as its own, rules against alcohol abuse. Now, after six years of court battles, the airline has been forced to take him back,

It boggles the mind. Here is a pilot who had slipped deep into the clutches of alcoholism, and neither the FAA nor his airline knew it. When the airline finally wised up and fired him, it couldn't make its own decision stick.

So how do we keep the Larry Morrisons from risking our lives? Increasingly, transportation officials have been moving toward random testing-giving a surprise urinalysis or blood test to catch abusers and to deter others from getting smashed. Just after the November elections, the Department of Transportation announced that it would require commercial air operators and other transportation companies to test workers in safety-related jobs for five kinds of illegal drugs.

A wise move. While few people have had their lives threatened by intoxicated reservation clerks, drunk pilots are a cause of greater concern. But the new DOT plan wouldn't have kept Larry Morrison's boozy breath out of the cockpit that summer morning. It doesn't call for testing for alcohol or for tranquilizers, muscle relaxants, or any other prescription sedatives that can affect a pilot's reflexes and judgment just as severely as illegal drugs. The DOT's failure to ground drunk pilots is a classic illustration of poor regulation. It also illustrates the failure of courts and unions to protect our safety.

Take my word, please

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