"Capt.Doug" wrote in message ...

Maximum blood alcohol level under FAA regs is .04%.
A recent court case involving airline pilots charged by local police was
dismissed. The judge ruled that federal laws pre-empt state and local laws
as concerns *commercial* aviation. Commercial aviation is considered
interstate commerce. It doesn't matter where the pilots live. The ruling
didn't mention anything about local police charging private pilots with
unlawful intoxication.


That's correct. Since there is a federal criminal statute that
covers drunk commercial flying, it preempts the state (Florida?)
drunken flying statute. If the case involved a non-commercial flight,
there is no federal criminal statute that covers it, so presumably,
federal preemption would not happen.

That was the problem in the case of the (allegedly) drunk PA pilot
several months ago. The feds threw their hands up and said they
couldn't criminally prosecute because there was no law covering
non-commercial ops. The state had no drunken flying law and was
trying to broaden the scope of existing motor vehicle laws to cover
the incident. So far, the judge has not bought it.

I heard last week that PA now has a "flying while intoxicated" law
working its way through the legislature because of that case. Other
states have used similar laws to prosecute drunk, non-commercial
pilots in the past.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)