Last month I wrote about 30 Air India pilots testing positive in preflight alcohol tests over 3 years. That seemed like a lot.

Air India Boeing 777-200LR, Copyright: boarding1now / 123RF Stock Photo

You don’t often see flight crew drunk, but when you do it’s a big deal. Last year an American co-pilot was arrested on suspicion of being drunk (a reader at the time asked, “Does this mean AA is back serving pre-departure drinks?”) and two United pilots showed up too drunk to fly. A Citilink pilot was filmed stumbling through airport security and then taped slurring his predeparture announcement and a Canadian pilot passed out in the cockpit and later blew a .24.

These are isolated incidents at different airlines, and newsworthy because so scary and rare. But it seems to happen at Air India where pilots often seem out of control, even refusing assignments unless the airline schedules crew with them that they find attractive or they’re being sent to the destination they prefer to visit. Or declaring a fuel emergency just to get landing priority.

Pilot sobriety matters. There was even a Denzel Washington movie about this.

Still I was surprised to learn that 132 pilots and 434 crew members at Air India have “regularly been ‘evading’” mandatory alcohol tests.

The country’s safety regulator has served an ultimatum on the airline, and is threatening to suspend all 566 crew, however despite the serious nature of the issue they don’t expect to do it all at once because it would inhibit the carrier’s operations. You’d think crew who might test positive for alcohol could do that as well.

Sending a poor signal to staff, in February Air India’s Executive Director for operations had his flying license suspended for 3 months after “an internal probe found him ‘guilty’ of skipping the breath analyser test for one particular flight.” He has since been promoted and is now a board member of the airline.