Seriously people, lets all try to be a little careful of where we are, and what we plan to do before taking our shrooms. It’s not just a “go anywhere/do anything” kind of a deal.
He was going to San Francisco. If you can’t take mushrooms on a trip to SF, then what kind of world has this become?
He totally could have waited. Just a small amount of trip planning.
Everyone keeps saying “mushrooms” but I am betting on something more potent (more than LSD but I am guessing).
Being depressed and a pilot is a very tough and lonely problem made very hard by the FAA’s attitude to even minor and medically addressable mental problems.
Consuming illegal drugs at any time, even well off-duty is far beyond the pale. Consuming them shortly before going to work, and going to work utterly sleep-deprived is when he transitions from an apparent medical case deserving of care to an apparent criminal negligence case worthy of a new career.
There is help out there for clinically depressed pilots; it isn’t always easy, but it’s a fuckton better than the path he chose.
When I was an airline pilot the conventional wisdom was that a jumpseater is considered part of the crew. I think that may even be in the regs, or at least part of the verbiage for the jumpseating security system. @LSLGuy can you help me on this point?
In any case, he’s not a regular passenger when sitting in the cockpit, irrespective of whether he was in uniform. As a cockpit jumpseater he certainly cannot be under the influence.
His life is pretty much over. Years in prison and then…Amtrak.
The guy was commuting to work. The expectation was that he would commence working at most a few hours after he arrived in SF, and perhaps nearly immediately. Alaska has said he had a trip later that day. He would be in no shape under FAR 117 rest requirements, nor the no-intoxicating substances rule at the time he would have commenced duty in SF. So barring a miracle of conscience he was on course to commit a serious violation that day.
A jumpseater occupies kind of a gray area in the regulations. They’re kinda part of the crew and kinda not. Kind of like deputizing a posse doesn’t make the citizens into LEOs, but they’re not quite regular citizens either. And like a posse, these regs are leftovers from an earlier, simpler era.
But there are detailed regs and FAA-approved company procedures that then carry the force of regulation on at least some points. These define who can and can’t be there, ID required, procedures to verify that ID, etc. And include a prohibition against being under the influence.
I doubt the feds could quite make a case that this guy was a operating as a crewmember on the jumpseating flight; that’s really be stretching the operating regs. But he almost certainly did violate both Horizon’s and Alaska’s FAA-approved procedures that almost certainly require jumpseaters to not be under the influence. I say “almost” only because I haven’t read those books myself, so I’m making an educated guess as to their contents.
Probably psilocybin rather than directly doing mushrooms, which, yeah, could well be more potent than what we’d normally think if we heard “shrooms”.
Recreational use is fairly common up there in Washington and Oregon and therapeutic use is being considered for legalization in both states
Slight hijack here: I laughed at this sentence because I once got myself in trouble on a checkride. During the oral exam I answered a question (the exact nature of which I don’t recall) and ended by saying it was something of a gray area in the regs.
The examiner slammed a hand on the table between us and said, “There are NO gray areas in the Federal Aviation Regulations!”
I only just barely kept myself from laughing in his face, but succeeded because I wanted to pass and we moved on. The idea is just patently absurd. Right at the beginning of Part 91 it says the PIC is responsible for “all available information” about the flight. I’ve never seen it defined fully, and doubt I ever will.
I wonder if this incident will set those trends toward legalization back several years.
If so, I’m not sure what to think. Probably, that would be an unfair overreaction. He could have been (say) drunk, after all, and (ahem) pulled the same stunt.
The relevant FAR citation is: eCFR :: 14 CFR 121.547 – Admission to flight deck. (FAR 121.547).
Which is clear as mud to somebody who’s not used to reading this stuff. But which amounts to “See the company’s FAA-approved procedures for details”. The procedures at my former carrier are covered by the TSA “need to know” security umbrella and that’s the end of what I’ll say about that.
It’s ignorant assholes like that who give the FAA a bad name.
If the guy told investigators he had 'shrooms, I’m guessing it was 'shrooms. That is much easier to obtain recreationally than pills (which are just measured doses of ground-up mushrooms anyway). Therapeutic use is still not really available here despite the law. There are a bunch of hoops the providers need to jump through, and I don’t think any have completed that yet.
It is absolutely possible to trip balls on plain mushrooms, given the right potency and amount. At least, that’s what people tell me.
I have also been told that what you’ve heard is true.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here as “side door in the back leading to the outside” is what I meant by “cabin door”. It’s the cockpit doors that were reinforced after 9/11. The sequence of events AIUI is that after he was subdued in the cockpit, he was led to the back of the plane, and there attempted to pull the handle of what CNN referred to as an “emergency exit”.
And of course in many cases, legal ones, too. As we discussed in another thread, after the legalization of cannabis in Canada a few years ago, all the major airlines AFAIK (Air Canada and Westjet for sure) immediately moved to prohibit consumption of cannabis at any time by anyone directly involved in flight operations. Transport Canada is more lenient with respect to actual license conditions and requires abstention for a minimum of 28 days before operating an aircraft. Given that the airlines are stricter than that, in practice this is mostly only relevant to general aviation.
And so it has come to pass. He will now have a new career as a jailbird, possibly preceded by a short gig as a patient in a mental hospital.
It’s hard to fathom what could have driven someone with an accomplished career to be so incredibly stupid. But then, we recently had a story about another pilot bragging to a flight attendant about his fun with hookers and blow the night before. He, too, is now in search of a new career, and quite possibly, a new marriage. Unlike our other friend, the jailbird opportunity was not offered, so he’s on his own.
Given the extreme concern the major airlines have about their image, and towering far above al the rest, their image regarding the singular issue of safety, I think the expression “shitting bricks” can currently be applied to the Alaska Airlines PR department. There is literally nothing good they can say, and silence is worse.
Stupidity happens a lot in every line of work. We’ve certainly had executives or salescritters in other industries get drunk and go all Ken (or Chad or some other pejorative name) and the viral vid of their rampage is their undoing.
A difference with this industry is everybody is not under a microscope; they’re under the glare of viral social media. Any misbehavior on/near duty will go public and quickly.
How many people in the USA have busted through a recalcitrant parking lot gate? Seeing how many of them I notice broken, the answer has to be a lot of them. I bet that United pilot was the only one this year to lose his job over it though.
Which is not me complaining that he shouldn’t lose his job. It is me suggesting the difference in reported incidents of misbehavior isn’t more miscreantism; it’s more, and more public, scrutiny.
Hmmm …
He pleaded not guilty to all state charges Tuesday.
The state charges are the 83 charges of attempted murder, reckless endangerment, and one count of endangering an aircraft. The federal charge is “interfering with flight crew”.
Looks like he’s angling for some sort of insanity plea.
Another public relations triumph for Alaska Airlines for hiring him, regularly screening him, and eventually promoting him!
“Here” being Oregon, by the way. There was a recent article in the NYT about a patient in Bend going through psilocybin therapy. According to that article there’s 15 (IIRC) clinics in Oregon that are licensed to give that therapy. They’re very backlogged for patients, though.
I’m behind the times, I didn’t realize they started taking patients this summer. Yeah, there are 14 currently licensed facilities.
But therapeutic use is a waaay lower dose than whatever he might have had to keep him up for 2 days. I’d guess there’s a lot more going on with him than just a bad trip.