Are you in or are you out?

Drug and alcohol testing under 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) part 120 can be a complicated maze. It is a violation when you don’t put people “in the pool” (under-test) as well as when you put the wrong people “in the pool” (over-test). The “pool” is the group of safety-sensitive employees whom the government has decided must be tested under the Department of Transportation (DOT)/Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regime. The association always hated this rule and believes it should have been limited to those who actually perform aircraft maintenance; that is, only test the persons who work on the completed aircraft. That, unfortunately, is not how the rule is applied; indeed, operators have to ensure their maintenance providers (mostly repair stations) are testing safety-sensitive persons “at any tier” of the contractual relationship.

Persons in the United States performing “directly or by contract (including by subcontract at any tier)…aircraft maintenance or preventive maintenance duties” for parts 121 and 135 air carriers, as well as part 91 operators carrying people for compensation or hire (§ 91.147), must be included in the pool. The description includes people who conduct maintenance or preventive maintenance functions every day, as well as anyone ready to perform or immediately available to perform those safety-sensitive tasks. Alterations are not included, but that doesn’t mean the FAA wouldn’t consider those tasks “safety-sensitive”; when the government uses sloppy verbiage it merely enforces what it meant to say.

The bottom line is that people are being tested who don’t need to be and others are not tested who should be “in the pool.” A couple of reasons it is difficult to figure who should be in or out of the pool are:

(1) A company’s job descriptions as well as the duties, responsibilities, and authorities in a repair station manual do not contemplate compliance with the drug and alcohol testing rules. Since human resource departments lean on the “quality folk” for job descriptions, there can be a big disconnect when descriptions or duties change. People who should or should not be tested get lost in the shuffle—violations that are easy to find and enforce include transferring a person from a non-safety-sensitive job to a safety-sensitive one without pre-employment testing.

(2) The FAA enforces the rule through drug abatement, but it is the Flight Standards Division that determines whether something is “maintenance or preventive maintenance.” Since there is no written procedure of how the two offices must coordinate when questions come up or enforcement actions are contemplated, the message from either to a certificate holder on compliance is problematic.

No need to fear, the association can help its members figure out who should or should not be allowed in the pool—just give us a call or use arsa@arsa.org to send us a question.