India mulling random drug test for commercial pilots at least once a year

Mumbai: India is considering requiring every commercial pilot to undergo a random drug test at least once a year, potentially increasing the minimum testing coverage tenfold after an Air India captain tested positive for marijuana following a serious in-flight incident.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) currently mandates random testing of at least 10% of pilots annually. Civil aviation minister K Rammohan Naidu said Tuesday that DGCA is consulting airlines and other stakeholders on tighter rules governing psychoactive-substance testing.

"One of the opinions from our side is that everyone has to go through it in the year at a random time," Naidu said on the sidelines of an event. He stressed that regulators would need to balance aviation safety with the operational impact of testing the entire pilot network. Asked whether testing would rise to 25% or 50%, Naidu said DGCA is examining the implications of increasing it to 100%.


Also read: Supreme Court tells Tarun Tejpal to surrender within two weeks

"DGCA is engaging and one of the opinions from our side is that everyone has to go through it in the year at a random time," he said. "So, we have to see how all the stakeholders are going to respond to this because one is the safety aspect of it, one is to keep the safety intact, and the second thing is the operational impact also; that also has to be taken into consideration. So, we are going to balance both."

The government's deliberation follows an August 4 Air India flight from Phuket to Delhi that suffered a sudden altitude loss of about 300 feet, injuring 24 people. The captain subsequently tested positive for marijuana. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), tasked with probing the incident, including possible technical factors, has yet to establish its cause.

Naidu said the aircraft and its data recorder are in the AAIB possession and that a preliminary report could come "very early from now." He also said airlines beyond Air India are conducting drug tests, without specifying their scope.

Also read: From cloud to consumer, AI is reshaping business: 'Agents can reset work, not leadership'

Air India has begun testing its more than 5,000 pilots, while the Federation of Indian Pilots has proposed raising annual random testing to 25%. India's major airlines employ about 12,000 pilots. If adopted, 100% annual random testing would represent a major expansion of the current procedure.