Drunks on the road don’t intend to harm anyone either.
The guy just doesn’t show good judgment at all. “I’m kinda fucked in the head, so tripping on shrooms oughtta get my mind right, especially after I haven’t slept for a few days. Fly the friendly skies!”
Yeah, F him.
Not everyone, but some here are what I would call far too forgiving. Imagine you, or your wife, or your mom, or hell your dog were on the plane. And he succeeded in crashing it (whether that was his intent or not). You willing to die for some “poor soul having a mental health crisis”, that he himself caused? I’m not in a forgiving mood!
I wouldn’t, but I’d see it as manslaughter rather than murder.
I imagine if that were the case, then I’d be far too emotionally invested in the scenario to objectively weigh his criminality and culpability.
So we should do… what?
Punish the hell out of him - charge him with so many attempted murders he never sees the light of day again? That will continue to disincentivize pilots seeking treatment for any sort of mental health disorder and ultimately create more chances for wives, moms and dogs to be on a doomed plane.
There are already many incentives to NOT sabotage aircraft, including the natural desire to not kill oneself. This is usually (but not always) enough to prevent that sort of thing, along with our security measures.
I’d say this man should probably never fly again. Or perhaps he should face a similar situation a pilot with alcoholism does when they do not confess in advance and are caught working under the influence: Suspension for some period of time, strip all pilot ratings. Earn them back if you can and good luck getting re-hired. Or maybe he still has a role to play - eventually becoming the poster-person for pilots seeking help. He seems to be forthright and accepting responsibility so far. I don’t think he should be summarily thrown away.
In any case, given the details here I don’t see much advantage to taking an overly punitive approach that leads to incarceration. I’d guess most professional pilots had the same reaction I had to hearing about this: “Thank Og I didn’t do something like that. Gotta keep being careful.”
But what if he was thinking: “I’m kinda fucked in the head, so tripping on shrooms oughtta get my mind right, especially since I dasn’t seek help and let my employer know I’ve got an issue.”
I should have thought of this earlier - there is a diversion program for pilots with alcohol problems called Human Intervention Motivation Study (HIMS). Maybe something similar should exist for mental health.
Here’s an article about a pilot who did not go through HIMS, but whose case influenced it:
Except he wasn’t flying the plane. He was the equivalent of a drunk passenger in a car.
No, first of all I was referring to his obvious long-term depression and what now appears to have been psychosis, not to his deadheading in the cockpit – which as pointed out above entails some of the same responsibilities as active flight crew.
But much more seriously, he was scheduled to operate a flight as Captain shortly after arriving in San Francisco.
Again, not passing judgment on what the consequences should be for him, but just getting the facts straight, as I understand them.
There’s a balance that has to be found between punishment as a deterrence – lest others engage in the same activity and use mental illness as a (possibly fabricated) defense – and the best outcome for this individual and his family. I fear that no good outcome may be possible, considering the societal desire for retribution and his already much worsened mental condition. But my view does incline towards mental health treatment as the highest priority, as opposed to lengthy imprisonment.
According to that article, he was next scheduled to fly six days after trying the mushrooms, or four days after arriving in SF. So not that shortly.
The original articles right after it happened said that his employer had said he was scheduled to work later on the day he had the event. If subsequent articles have updated that preliminary info, that’s certainly a good bit of news for this guy. One of the very, very few bits of good news.
Sure, if we’re talking about a drunk passenger sitting next to the driver, where he can reach over and grab the steering wheel and/or great shift.
This guy wasn’t just a random passenger in economy class; sitting in a jump seat in the cockpit within easy reach of levers that control the fate of scores of other people meant that a great deal more trust had been placed in him than is ever placed in ordinary passengers. His violation far exceeds that of a drunk economy-class passenger who stumbles forward and pounds on the outside of the cockpit door.
I think we can simultaneously say that the zero tolerance approach to mild and common mental health struggles such as depression is detrimental to safety, and should be reformed; and that, notwithstanding those circumstances, the choices made by this pilot were so egregious that he must never fly again and probably deserves some prison time. These things can both be true.
Agreed. The trick is to actually do both of them, not just talk about doing them. And do the much harder first one soon enough that nobody else ends up at the extreme place this guy got to where trying mushrooms (or other serious self-medications) sounded like the least bad solution to his personal dilemma.
This makes it sound as if he reached for mushrooms in a desperate attempt to treat a condition because his world would allow no other option. The NYT article above says:
It isn’t clear from this whether the mushrooms were a group experience, socially / recreationally, during a bonding weekend, or a personal search for effective self-medication where the experiment happened on this weekend. I think it makes a difference which one, though of course the two aren’t completely mutually exclusive; he’d probably heard about using mushrooms for depression and maybe researched it. But doing drugs with your friends on a camping trip is kind of a bad way to go about seeking treatment, and I think the “self-medication for depression etc.” would fit a LOT of casual / recreational use of everything from cannabis to fentanyl.
Yes, we in general and the aviation industry in particular need to do a much better job of mental health everything, but I still think he made some unforgivable choices. It’s not like 83 counts of attempted murder will get him executed (I hope!), but he did make a very serious mistake as a result of circumstances largely within his control.
Agreed overall.
As to this:
My PCP has a saying: “Tell me your drug of abuse and I’ll tell you what social or psychological problem you’re treating.” She’s only partly kidding.
I still can’t get used to the alternate meaning for this acronym, I always do a double take.
But hey, you’re no longer flying, take all the angel dust you want! Just try not to eat anyone.
When Social Security stopped paying disability for substance abuse - guess what? All of those people actually weren’t working due to mental impairments! 
My PCP (who has since retired) asked me one year about my drug and alcohol use. I very honestly told him how much alcohol I drank and the amount of cannabis I used. He sat looking at his computer screen, frowning. He asked if I would cut back if he explained about the harm it was potentially causing and I told him no. He knew me socially and we’d shared a pint or two.
He then explained that if he filled out the form honestly it would throw up a ton of red flags that his partners would tsk-tsk about and he’d get hell for not acting more aggressively. So he changed all the numbers so he/I could slide by.
I am not a pilot, though.
Which is funny, because although I know of angel dust, that definition is about #12 on my list of meanings for PCP and it never, never occurs to me when I read or hear “PCP”.
Nothing wrong in that. You do you and you seem to do it both successfully and with great gusto.
To me at least the line between use and abuse is not “Would you (any you) be healthier if you didn’t?”. It’s “Are you (any you) rapidly destroying your life and can’t (not won’t) stop?”. Docs like to use the former definition; I (and you too it seems) prefer the latter.
There is a LOT of clear space between those two realities where we all can have more fun at some probabilistic cost to our eventual longevity. I spend a lot of time at the beach & am rather tanned given my very whitebread complexion. My dermatologist is not happy with my decisions, but he’s happy to charge me to slice off the completely predictable cancers.
And I’m happy to have him do that. I see that as win-win. Doubtless you do the same about your “unhealthy” habits. I drink more than my PCP prefers, and will eventually get around to experimenting with other recreational substances too. Tough shit, Doc. I know you mean well, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing it your way.
It’s nice not being an active pilot anymore.