Taoyuan Union of Pilots (TUP) yesterday said EVA Airways deliberately withheld a report on a foreign pilot who failed alcohol tests multiple times in May, but was eventually allowed to fly.
The union said the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) should investigate the matter and issue penalties accordingly.
The incident occurred on May 6, when the airline dispatched a Japanese-American pilot to fly cargo flight BR625 from New York to Anchorage, Alaska, the union said.
After reporting for duty, the pilot first tested 0.23 blood alcohol level and was allowed to fly after it fell to zero blood alcohol level following seven more tests. The flight was delayed for more than three hours because of the incident.
The airline was scheduled to hold a meeting at the Prosecutors’ Personnel Review Committee to discuss whether the pilot should be punished, but the pilot quit before the committee was convened.
“The airline did not cancel the pilot’s flight duty and instead administered an alcohol test every 20 minutes until a test showed zero alcohol level. It claimed that it had to do so as it had no other pilots in New York to dispatch,” the union said.
The union on June 26 hosted a news conference saying that Taiwan’s second-largest airline heavily recruits foreign pilots and enforces a preferential treatment toward foreign pilots in training and performance review.
“The case served as another example of how the airline is also loose in its administering of alcohol tests to pilots,” the union said.
It has been the airline’s policy since its launch three decades ago that those who did not score zero in an alcohol test should be removed from active duty and await internal investigations, the union said, adding that such a policy should apply to every pilot and flight attendant without any exception.
“If a Taiwanese pilot was sent to fly the cargo jet in New York that day, their flight duties would have been canceled and they would have been fired immediately,” the union said. “However, this foreign pilot was able to carry out the flight duty and returned to Taiwan.”
“The airline did not plan to convene a personnel review committee at the end of last month and the pilot continued to be dispatched for flight duties for two more months before the incident generated dissatisfaction among pilots,” the union said.
TUP chairwoman Anny Lee (李信燕) said that the airline did not report any cabin crew members failing alcohol tests in May in its monthly report to CAA.
It shows that the airline deliberately hid this incident from the civil aviation authority, and CAA should investigate and issue punishment accordingly, Lee said.
The airline said that the pilot tested 0.2 blood alcohol level during the first alcohol test, adding that the pilot said they did not consume alcohol 12 hours prior to reporting for duty, as per the company’s regulations.
However, the pilot said they drank 14 hours before the assignment and requested to be tested again, the airline said.
The pilot was finally allowed to go on duty after testing zero blood alcohol level, the airline said, adding that it had other pilots in New York to take the assignment if the pilot had failed the test.
The airline said that it had launched an investigation into the incident, interviewed all relevant stakeholders and asked them to write about what happened in a report.
The pilot was also asked to go to the company to explain what happened on the day, but they quit before the personnel review was convened.
“We have conducted an internal investigation regarding our failure to not strictly follow standard procedures to administer alcohol tests,” the company said.
The CAA said that the airline’s outstation staff failed to follow the company’s procedures and administered the alcohol test more than twice, adding that it would ask the airline to address the problem immediately based on the Civil Aviation Act (民用航空法).
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