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Rise in Drug Use Is Found in Pilots Killed in Crashes

NTSB Chairman: Chris Hart

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Pilots killed in airplane crashes in 2012 tested positive for drugs four times more often than those killed in 1990, according to a study by the National Transportation Safety Board, although drawing a causal link between drugs and crashes was difficult.

The board, in a study approved Tuesday, said doctors and the Federal Aviation Administration were not doing enough to warn pilots about how their performance could be affected by drugs - prescription, over-the-counter and illicit. Perhaps the most worrisome category was sedating antihistamines, present in 9.9 percent of pilots who died from 2008 to 2012, compared with 5.6 percent from 1990 to 1997. The ingredients in Vicodin and Valium also showed up more frequently.

Nearly all the cases involved private pilots. One of the few commercial crashes in which the safety board determined that drugs were a cause took place in March 1983, when a Learjet crashed at Newark International Airport. The board attributed the accident in part to marijuana and other drugs.

The board cites the use of drugs, legal or illegal, as a factor in about 3 percent of crashes.

Toxicology reports on pilots killed in crashes showed a positive result for one drug 39 percent of the time in 2012, up from 9.6 percent in 1990. The percentage with more than one drug rose to 20.5 percent from 2 percent, and more than two drugs rose to 8.3 percent in 2012 from zero in 1990.

The board's study said the pilot population, like the nation itself, was getting older and sicker and thus more likely to be taking medication, some of which could affect performance and others used to treat "potentially impairing conditions," like heart problems.

Over the years of the study, which covered 6,677 fatalities, the average age of pilots who died increased to 57.3 from 46.2. The pilots who died were, on average, about 15 years older than pilots as a whole.