Flying plane while drunk is no crime in Pennsylvania
Tuesday, May 18, 2004

By David B. Caruso, The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA -- Pilots too drunk to drive legally in Pennsylvania aren't necessarily risking prosecution if they take the controls of an airplane.

The state is one of only three in the nation without a law that makes it a crime for a pilot to fly while intoxicated.

Pilots risk Federal Aviation Administration sanctions, including the loss of their license, if they drink any amount of alcohol within eight hours of a flight, but the FAA doesn't have the authority to prosecute someone in criminal court, a spokesman for the agency said.

Federal law makes it a crime for anyone to operate a commercial aircraft with a blood alcohol level of 0.10 or more, but that standard is less stringent than the 0.08 limit in most states, including Pennsylvania.

That law also doesn't affect pilots flying private planes, as prosecutors in Montgomery County found out when they tried to press charges against a pilot they said had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 when he was arrested after flying loops around Philadelphia International Airport and a nuclear power plant in Limerick.

A district justice upheld charges of risking a catastrophe and reckless endangerment, but tossed out a count of driving under the influence.

"It was a little frustrating," said Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney John Gradel.

Prosecutors tried to get creative to make a charge stick. Gradel argued that state drunken driving law applied because the runway the pilot had used to taxi the plane was a public highway, but the judge didn't buy it, noting that the airport was, in fact, private property.

The judge tossed a similar argument that the airspace over the county could be considered a "highway."

Luzerne County prosecutors encountered a similar hurdle this week when a man scheduled to be a co-pilot on a commercial charter flight to Myrtle Beach, S.C., was detained at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport after the plane's captain raised concerns he had been drinking.

Authorities declined to reveal the results of the co-pilot's blood alcohol test. Luzerne County prosecutors reviewed the case, but their initial assessment was that the matter was best handled by federal prosecutors or the FAA.

Chris Dancy, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, said he did not see an immediate need for tougher sanctions to prevent pilots from drinking.

"Frankly, the abuse of alcohol by pilots is extremely low," he said. "The number of accidents in which alcohol is a factor -- I won't say that it doesn't happen, but it is negligible."

A search of a National Transportation Safety Board database of aviation accident reports revealed few crashes where intoxication was considered a factor.

Two people died in 2001 when a Cessna flown by a pilot who had taken barbiturates, an anti-depressant, an antihistamine sometimes prescribed as a sleep aid and quinine, crashed in Pittsfield, Warren County.

While most states have some sort of law creating criminal penalties for flying while drunk, some courts have questioned whether they are enforceable.