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The Federal Aviation Administration did not take enforcement action against the airline, after corrective action was taken by Spirit, which included weekly updates from the company that does the tests. In correspondence with the agency, Spirit admitted having “challenges” with drug testing in 2015.
A Dayton Daily News examination of previously unreleased federal records found at least three Spirit employees — including at least two pilots — received verified positive drug tests since 2015.
Additionally, there are six open FAA Drug Abatement Division investigations into former Spirit Airlines employees, according to the FAA and the airline. Five of the investigations are from last year, while another dates to 2014.
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A spokesman for Spirit Airlines said none of the employees under investigation remain employed at Spirit and said the airline itself is not under investigation.
“Every one of these investigations has been addressed appropriately and closed as it concerns Spirit Airlines,” said Paul Berry, a Spirit spokesman.
“That said, there may be situations with the individual who tested positive for drugs or alcohol has not taken the necessary steps to earn the right to work in the airline industry. This process usually takes a minimum of two years and includes steps of rehab, re-training, etc. Until the individual completes this process or if the individual decides that they don’t want to restore their ability to work for an airline, the case remains open from the individual’s perspective, even though the airline has been cleared.”
Berry said Spirit “operates with the highest degree of safety” and is “fully compliant with federal regulations.”
The newspaper’s examination additionally uncovered a March 20, 2017 letter from the FAA to Spirit executives that said the regulator “recently discovered” that an employee who was selected for testing in late 2015 was never tested.
That came four days after Spirit Airlines Capt. Brian Halye and his wife, Courtney, were found by their children dead of overdoses on cocaine and the powerful opioid carfentanil, according to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office.
“To have a person selected for testing and he missed it, that raises a red flag,” said Tom Haueter, retired director of the National Transportation Safety Board, Office of Aviation Safety. “Why would this guy miss testing? Did he slip through the cracks?”
The employee’s name was redacted in the records sent to the newspaper.
Spirit is the nation’s ninth-largest and fastest-growing airline. It does not fly out of Dayton, but has daily flights from Akron-Canton, Cleveland and Detroit, where Halye commuted.
Spirit officials have not publicly disclosed the last time the airline drug-tested Halye. His last flight was six days before his death.
‘It’s shocking’
More than 28,600 random drug tests were administered to pilots in 2015, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.
Of those, 12 pilots tested positive for drugs during random screening in 2015, including one Spirit pilot.
Industry-wide numbers for 2016 are not yet available, but the FAA records obtained by the newspaper show at least two more Spirit employees tested positive for drugs in 2016. The records show one was a pilot, but the FAA redacted the title of the other employee.
Drug testing regulations require testing of safety sensitive employees, including pilots, flight attendants and mechanics.
That at least two pilots at Spirit tested positive since 2015 was notable to John Cox, a retired US Airways pilot and former executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association, the nation’s largest pilot union.
“That’s very surprising to me,” Cox said of the positive tests.
“That pilot group is in the hundreds,” he said. “It’s not thousands upon thousands.”
Spirit Airlines says they have more than 1,600 pilots.
The Halye case raised a frightening spectre: that the opioid crisis may have entered the pilots’ ranks. But it’s not the first time a Spirit pilot tested positive for hard drugs.
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After a full day of domestic and overseas travel in 2007, Spirit Airlines Capt. Jeffrey Swaters was given a random drug test that revealed cocaine, morphine and heroin at levels “far above” the minimum required for a positive identification, according to court records from an unsuccessful appeal the pilot filed in an attempt to get his license restored.
Swaters disputed the results of the test, saying the urine wasn’t his. A federal appeals court denied his most recent legal action last year. An attorney for Swaters declined to comment for this article.
Malcolm Brenner, a retired NTSB psychologist, said the newspaper’s findings raise questions about the level of drug use in the industry as a whole.
“To me, it’s shocking,” Brenner said of the Halye and Swaters examples. “That you found another case of an active pilot who had been flying — holy God.”
Brenner noted that Spirit Airlines has not had enforcement actions bought against them by the FAA.
“They (the FAA) found problems, but they didn’t think they were severe enough to punish them,” he said. “The question in my mind is, is this just Spirit Airlines that is having trouble or is it more wide across the industry.”
‘Challenges observed’
Airlines have struggled to comply with drug and alcohol testing regulations “100 percent,” said Haueter, the retired NTSB investigator.
“It’s been a big issue with many airlines, maintenance facilities, to gather that information and make sure people don’t fall through the cracks,” he said.
FAA special investigators in September 2016 told Spirit executives that they found the company “did not require that random drug and alcohol tests were spread reasonably throughout the calendar year in 2015.”
Spirit Airlines acknowledged in correspondence with the FAA “challenges observed during the calendar year of 2015 related to Spirit Airlines DOT/FAA mandated drug and alcohol testing program.”
“What makes random testing effective as a deterrent is the element of surprise,” the FAA guidance to airlines reads. “You should conduct testing throughout a testing period so employees cannot predict when they might be tested.”
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A Sept. 19, 2016, response from the company acknowledged the problems from the previous year and said it has since transferred responsibility of the drug testing program to the airline’s safety department, and added two drug and alcohol coordinators to the company’s 2016 budget.
FAA closed the matter in November 2016 based on Spirit’s “acceptable corrective action.”
‘More vigilant’
The seminal force behind the movement to drug-test airline pilots was the 1988 crash of Trans-Colorado Flight 2286, a flight for Continental Express that killed nine of 17 people on board outside Durango, Colo.
Brenner and Haueter were both part of the crash investigation team, which found the captain and his girlfriend had been on a cocaine-fueled bender the night before.
“At the time of Trans-Colorado, at that time there was no testing of pilots or anyone else,” Haueter said. “There was a feeling back in those days that pilots weren’t part of the rest of the world. They didn’t do drugs or behave badly.”
But the increase in drug use across the nation could require additional scrutiny of the systems in place today.
“Now, we find out there are a lot of drugs in society,” Haueter said. “We have to be more vigilant in transportation because of this.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated since it was first published with new information that the six pending investigations involving Spirit Airlines all involve people who are now former employees.
Contact this reporter at Will.Garbe@coxinc.com.
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