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Two Pilots Charged with Being Drunk in Cockpit
Mon Jul 1, 6:47 PM ET
By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) - Two America West pilots taxiing for takeoff from Miami were ordered to turn the passenger plane back to the terminal on Monday and arrested on charges of operating a plane while drunk, police said.


The pilot and co-pilot got into a dispute with a security screener who tried to prevent them from carrying cups of coffee to the gate, and the screener alerted police that they smelled of alcohol, said Miami-Dade County Police spokesman Juan Delcastillo.

"They were in the cockpit. The plane was taxiing. The police contacted the tower and the tower instructed the pilots to return to the gate," Delcastillo said.

The pilots failed a field sobriety test at the gate and were taken to a police substation at the airport for a breath test that measures blood alcohol levels, he said.

"The pilot came back with 0.091 and the co-pilot with a 0.084," he said.

Florida law considers a person to be intoxicated at 0.08.

Pilot Thomas Cloyd, 44, and co-pilot Christopher Hughes, 40, were jailed on felony charges of operating an aircraft under the influence of alcohol, police said.

In addition to the pilots, the plane had 124 passengers and three flight attendants aboard, said America West spokeswoman Patty Nowack.

The flight was canceled and the passengers were placed on other flights to Phoenix, she said.

"We will conduct an investigation as well and if it confirms those (test) results, the pilots will be terminated," Nowack said from the airline's headquarters in Phoenix.

"If there was any alcohol present, the amount is irrelevant. America West has a zero tolerance policy. No amount of alcohol use is tolerated by America West while our flight crews are working or within 12 hours of departure," Nowack said.

The Federal Aviation Administration ( news - web sites) is also investigating the incident, spokesman Christopher White said. Federal rules prohibit any member of the flight crew from consuming any alcohol within eight hours of going on duty, according to the agency's Web site.

White said the agency would "take appropriate action" if the charges proved true but could not immediately say if that meant automatic suspension of the pilots' flying certificates.

[Drbio]

un-freaking-believable.

Two pilot openings tomorrow at America West!