NEW DELHI: Commercial pilots in India could soon be subjected to annual dope tests that may be conducted at random for the surprise factor. After the pilot in command of Air India’s Aug 4 Phuket-Delhi flight had reportedly tested positive, govt had directed the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to review the existing rules for these tests.“The DGCA is having stakeholder consultation right now on what the current regulation says and how do we ensure there is a strict policy around this (drug tests for pilots) in the future. This consultation is going on right now. There are multiple ways of approaching this dope test. So right now the rule says 10% across the overall pilot network but just like I said 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,” Union aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu said Tuesday.“We have to see how all the stakeholders are going to respond to this because one is the safety aspect of to ensure safety intact and the second is the operational impact. That also has to be taken into consideration.. We are going to balance both. If we do 100%, if every pilot has to go through the dope test once a year, then what can happen, what can be the impact of that, that is what DGCA is looking at,” Naidu added.
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Air India group has initiated a one-time dope test on all its pilots. Other airlines are also doing the same voluntarily, the minister said.The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is probing the why the Air India Airbus A320 had suffered a sudden loss of altitude by about 300 while operating as AI 2379 on Aug 4 from Phuket to Delhi which had left 20 passengers and four crew members injured. European aerospace major Airbus and France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) also joined the probe under AAIB whose report is expected in a week, according to officials.“Because everything is intact, the data recorder and everything is intact, the plane has also been in their possession…So I believe that we can expect some preliminary report very early from now,” Naidu said.