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Two America West Pilots Arrested for Being Drunk in Cockpit

Aired July 02, 2002 - 14:07   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: America West says it will fire two pilots if it turns out that they were drunk in the cockpit.

Thomas Cloyd and Christopher Hughes are out on bond today after being charged with operating an aircraft under the influence.

Joining us now with the latest from Miami, CNN's Susan Candiotti -- Susan.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello Kyra.

The FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, is currently investigating these two pilots, and has before it several options which could include permanent revocation of their pilots' licenses, or suspension. That's still to be seen.

It involves a case of two America West pilots, as you just indicated. They have been charged with both felony and misdemeanor counts of operating an aircraft while under the influence of alcohol, as well as driving while under the influence. They bonded out of jail late last night here in Miami.

It all started yesterday. They were scheduled to leave at 10:30 in the morning. And the reason they got caught -- that they were caught to begin with is that two airport security screeners were doing their job. First they came to their attention because they tried to go through a security checkpoint with a couple of open coffee cups. And then when screeners called them on they become, according to police, "argumentative."

At that time, this screener and a supervisor noticed alcohol on their breath, notified authorities. By the time the police got to the plane, the plane had already taxied away from the gate, and so the tower was notified, the plane was called on back from the tarmac just before it took off for that flight to Phoenix.

The pilots voluntarily submitted, according to police, to take breathalyzer tests, and both failed. They were just over the legal limit of .08.

As you can well imagine, Kyra, passengers were pretty upset.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our bags were searched twice, and they let pilots get on the plane that are intoxicated, apparently.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would never show up to work that way. I mean, our lives are in the hands of these people, and they don't care.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: At this time those two pilots have been suspended with pay by America West Airlines. It is believed that the two pilots are heading back to the Phoenix area.

And as we said, the FAA will continue its investigation. It's not known when they will wrap things up to decide what they will do about these pilots.

The question is: What is there professional future? Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Susan Candiotti, thank you.

We're going to talk more about these two big aviation stories now.

Our Miles O'Brien is here -- space correspondent, aviation correspondent.

We've got a lot to handle today, don't we?

MILES O'BRIEN, SPACE, AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we've got a lot on our plate.

Let's get right to it. Let's do a little bit of geography first, shall we?

Geography lesson -- why don't you put the map up of Europe, I'll be happy to show you a little bit about how this midair might have occurred. I'll try to do my geography a little better this time. Munich is actually -- oh, gosh.

Kyra, this is difficult work here.

Munich is there, Bergamo, Italy is there, Barcelona is there, and Brussels is there. Those are the four key cities that are important here as we talk about this trip of these two aircraft.

The DHL 757 was headed on that journey. The Tupolev 154, having begun in Moscow, was on its way to Barcelona, doing that journey. As you can see right there, the spot where Alessio Vinci was just live, is the spot where that collision occurred.

We'll tell you a little bit more about how that might have happened. But first let me tell you briefly about the aircraft in question. The Boeing 757 operated by DHL, the freight hauler, this is a modified aircraft that was one used for passenger hauling, now is a freight carrier. It cruises at 520 miles an hour, range of about 3,000 miles. Capable of carrying some 60,000 pounds worth of payload.

The Tupolev 154, kind of the Soviet version of the 727. Bigger, heavier; but very reliable. Cruising speed of 560, capacity of about 156 to 180 passengers. About 1,000 of them built since 1972.

Now, here's a scenario that has been out there as we've been talking a little bit about what might have happened over the skies of Germany in the darkness at 36,000 feet.

If you look in the foreground here, this is the DHL 757, and over here in the distance is the Tupolev 154. This is northbound, or northwesterly; this is a southwesterly track here. As the planes were flying along, what happened simultaneous to them getting onto a collision course, if you will, there was a handoff between two controllers -- a German controller to a Swiss controller who was talking to the Tupolev pilot.

Now, in the course of that handoff, the Swiss controller, who was handling the DHL plane, realized that there was a conflict and a potential collision point somewhere between the two. He told the Russian pilot to descend 1,000 feet to 35,000 feet. The DHL plane was at 36,000.

As they drew closer -- it took some time, first of all, to get that Russian to understand -- got to remember, English is not his first language; English is the language of aviation.

As he got closer, the collision-avoidance system on the 757 detected this target here as an intruder, and gave instructions to this pilot to dive, dive, dive. As they -- he began his avoidance, the Russian pilot began his maneuver requested by the air traffic controller. Unfortunately, all this happened simultaneously, thus creating the crash point there.

That is the current scenario that is currently out there.

Let me just tell you a little bit about these traffic collision avoidance systems as we go to Web, please, just briefly. Basically what it sets up is a zone around an aircraft, kind of an oval zone, if you will. The plane in the center here, being the plane that is equipped with the TCAS, Traffic Collision Avoidance System, this being the intruder here. As it enters this zone, the pilot is able to see on a screen in front of him -- a color screen not unlike this one -- a series of dots which are possible targets he.

Can track up to 40 targets like this. Each of those targets will tell you it's going a certain direction. If you look closely, they have little arrows on them, and so forth. If one of these targets appears to be a collision course, as apparently happened with that Tupolev aircraft, an audible sound will come up and it will say, dive, dive, dive or climb, climb, climb.

It will make a decision for the pilot. The pilot is obliged to follow that because these devices are very effective. Unfortunately in this case, simultaneous to that decision, the Russian plane sort of followed the evasive maneuver.

All of this comes out of a crash, you might recall, Kyra, in the late '70s in San Diego. A crash between a Pacific Southwest Airlines 727 and a small Cessna 172 on approach to Lindbergh Field there. The plane -- the commercial airliner lost track of that small Cessna and literally flew on top of it as it was approaching Lindbergh Field.

Subsequent to that, the FAA decided these TCAS systems, Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems, would be the rule of the land. And really, now they are the rule of the world when it comes to commercial aviation.

Unfortunately in case because of some fluky timing, it did not save the day over Germany -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, the other big aviation story that's been going on, of course -- I don't mean to move right off of this, but we want to get you to touch on, are the two America West pilots, OK, that have now been charged with being drunk.

How did they even get into that airplane and start taxiing down the runway before called back?

O'BRIEN: Well, it's -- they might have been technically legal according to the FAA standards. The FAA standards are eight hours from bottle to throttle. That's the term the pilots use. In other words, you can have a drink up to eight hours and one minute before you're actually going to be flying an aircraft.

Now many airlines, however, have much stricter rules -- some cases 24 hours, some cases zero tolerance.

The other rule that they have to be cognizant of is a blood alcohol content of .04, which is about half the allowable blood alcohol content for a drunk driver.

How they made that decision that they were safe to fly? I'd be speculating, but the fact remains is, that over the years, these scenarios have happened time and again. In 1990, you remember the Northwest flight in South Dakota flew to Minneapolis. The pilots had been out late the night before partying. Passengers had phoned into the FAA. They were arrested and went to jail for some time because of the endangerment issue.

It happens from time to time. There's drug and alcohol screening, random drug tests for flight crews. Nevertheless, a bit of human nature.

PHILLIPS: And it's rare. We want to point out, definitely it's a rare occurrence.

O'BRIEN: Absolutely.

PHILLIPS: All right, Miles O'Brien, thank you so much.

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