Drug abuse among pilots and flight crew is unfortunately not a totally uncommon problem amongst Indonesian airlines. Despite numerous busts in the past, the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) continues to find evidence that some of the people charged with the safety of hundreds of airplane passengers are also drug abusers.
BNN yesterday set up various drug test posts throughout Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport with the aim of conducting surprise urine tests on 600 flight crew members, including pilots and flight attendants.
“The current result of the investigation is that a co-pilot and an air hostess are suspected of having consumed amphetamine,” said BNN Inspector General Bachtiar Tambunan, as quoted by Tempo yesterday.
Bachtiar said the co-pilot and flight attendant works for different airlines, but he did not reveal which airlines they were.
He also said that the two suspects claim to be suffering from an unspecified illness and that they might not have known that their medication contained amphetamine. The two suspects are both suspended from duty while BNN carries out further lab tests on them.
Shockingly, it was only in December of last year that BNN arrested a co-pilot and two flight attendants, all of whom worked for Lion Air, for drug use. While the pilot and cabin staff were banned from ever working in the aviation industry again, Lion Air did not receive any sanctions whatsoever. Authorities should seriously consider making airlines liable for any drug abuse for their flight staff, because clearly the sporadic testing done by BNN is not enough to catch all of them – which is inexcusable when each and every one of them endangers the lives of everybody aboard their aircrafts.
