The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that the airline industry and Transport Canada should develop a program
requiring pilots to be tested for drugs and alcohol, the Transportation Safety Board said Thursday. A Canadian Press dispatch to The Globe quotes TSB chairman Kathy Fox
calling on both sides to work with employees to implement a program that would protect public safety. Ms. Fox added that self-policing
by the industry has not worked, so the issue of impairment will continue to go unreported. "What's needed is something more, especially for safety-sensitive positions where, to be plain, people's
lives could be at stake," she told a news conference after releasing a report into a crash
that killed two people. "Alcohol impairment almost certainly played a role," Ms. Fox said of the cargo plane crash on April 13,
2015, in the mountains north of Vancouver. Four other fatal crashes since 2009, three involving commercial
operators, had drugs or alcohol as a contributing factor, said Ms. Fox. The B.C. Coroners Service had reported that Robert Brandt, pilot of
a twin-engine Swearingen cargo aircraft operated by Carson Air, had a blood-alcohol level of three times the legal limit for driving.
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