After JAL and ANA group pilots were separately found drinking excessively before flights last month, both companies submitted reports to the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry on Friday, explaining the circumstances and preventive measures.
Japan Airlines' report revealed that a 42-year-old copilot, whom the British police arrested for exceeding the alcohol limit, tried to keep his distance from the captains and other crew members before their flight, and that the captains neglected double-checking with the copilot on the results of their preflight, in-house breathalyzer test.
The British police arrested the copilot just before he was about to board the plane from Heathrow Airport in London to Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Oct. 28, as they found his alcohol level 10 times over the British legal standard.
In ANA's case, a captain of ANA Wings, an ANA group company, became unable to operate a flight due to "poor physical condition" on Oct. 25, resulting in the delays of five domestic flights. The report explained that it was his drinking the previous night that contributed to the situation. The captain who was in his 40s resigned from the company after being instructed to do so.
According to the JAL report, the company interviewed 13 individuals, including the captains, who had been in contact with the copilot prior to the flight. Other than the bus driver who took him to the plane, however, no one else smelled alcohol on the copilot. The captains and other crew members said the copilot was trying to keep his distance from them.
The company said the copilot possibly had personal problems that drove him to drink excessively, and knowingly falsified his test results.
ANA's report revealed that the pilot in question drank with another ANA captain. At the time of the incident, ANA's regulations stated that pilots are prohibited from drinking alcohol within 12 hours of a flight. As an additional preventive measure, ANA is instituting a guideline limiting the consumption before the above time frame to the equivalent of two 500-milliliter cans of beer.
JAL President Yuji Akasaka apologized at a press conference in Tokyo after submitting the report, saying: "We caused an incident that never should have happened. We will continue to thoroughly investigate."
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
