Delhi High Court upholds pilot’s suspension despite 0.004% blood alcohol trace

However, the court observed that it does not possess the technical expertise to adjudicate on such submissions and left it to the authorities to consider the proposal.

“The consequences being serious, it is for the respondents to decide whether such a procedure can be followed at the specific request of the pilot on the spot, so that a pilot is not imposed with serious penalties, even if, in a given case, he has not consumed alcohol and has become a victim of a false positive,” the Delhi High Court bench said in its order dated May 4.

Suspension

The pilot was scheduled to operate a flight from Kolkata to Delhi in November 2017 when he tested positive for alcohol during a mandatory pre-flight breath analyser (BA) test, recording 0.004 per cent blood alcohol content. A second test also returned the same result, the Delhi High Court noted.

Thereafter, the airlines asked the pilot to submit his pilot license for necessary action and he was also removed from the flying roster following the procedure under the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR).

The pilot contended that he had not consumed alcohol and relied on subsequent blood and urine tests conducted at private laboratories, which showed negative results. He also argued that the breath analyser equipment was prone to errors.

The airlines suspended the appellant from his official duty for a period of three months.

The single judge of the Delhi High Court dismissed the writ petition filed by the appellant challenging the orders passed by the Director General of Civil Aviation and the Joint Director General of Civil Aviation.

Feeling aggrieved, the pilot appellant approached the division bench.

Single judge’s order upheld

The Delhi High Court noted that the conclusion drawn by the single judge resolved all the contentions raised by the appellant. The bench summed up the conclusions drawn by the single judge:

• Any test result subsequent to the BA test conducted at the airport is irrelevant.
• The presence of blood alcohol content has to be checked as per CAR. It is mandatory that the blood alcohol content at that time must be zero as stipulated in CAR.
• The DGCA has also rightly not relied upon the blood and urine test results conducted after the breath analyser test was found positive. If these blood and urine tests had been conducted by the airlines, then in that case, these results might have been considered in favour of the appellant.
• Several tests had taken place on the same date, from the same equipment, and if the equipment had been faulty or made errors, then there would have been other complaints in that regard, but no complaint had been received.
• The airlines had been using the equipment since the beginning and the number of false positives were very few in the last three years.
• The reference made in the email was not about the model which was used for conducting the breath analyser test of the appellant. Thus, the reliance placed by the appellant on the email to show that there were high numbers of false positives cannot be accepted.

The division bench also emphasised that in exercise of writ jurisdiction, it cannot re-appreciate every factual finding unless there is perversity or material irregularity in the decision-making process. The bench therefore dismissed the appeal.