United settles with pilot, agrees to non-AA HIMS compliance

jbarrass said:
Not clear to me why united had to pay, isn’t the love of AA an FAA thing?
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My understanding is the airlines run their own HIMS programs. It's also easier to sue a company than the Feds. Will be interesting to see if this leads to changes at the FAA, but I doubt they will change unless they are successfully sued as well.
 
Jeff Oslick said:
My understanding is the airlines run their own HIMS programs. It's also easier to sue a company than the Feds. Will be interesting to see if this leads to changes at the FAA, but I doubt they will change unless they are successfully sued as well.
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Basically this. HIMS is really a 121/135 operation program. It has been modified for GA pilots, but 3rd class medicals are more like HIMS-lite.

In the 121 world the airline has a lot of say in what a pilot participating in HIMS can use as an acceptable recovery program. It's a team approach between airline staff and FAA medical staff. There are usually contracts those pilots sign that stipulate they comply with the terms or there are consequences such as increased monitoring, return to inpatient/outpatient rehab, or being terminated. That's where the airline can get into problems by mandating AA, which has been established by courts as an organization that is religious in nature.

On the FAA side, AA is not an absolute mandate to participate in HIMS. They can't mandate it due to court rulings about it's religious nature. There are pilots that have successfully regained their medicals using abstinence based recovery groups that are not AA. That said, there's an unspoken understanding that AA is the preferred support group. Pilots that chose to use alternatives will likely face delays and other "difficulties".
 
Don’t gotta drink to get wrapped up in HIMS…

And the faa DOES mandate AA regularly.
 
I wasn’t kidding… I know more than a couple HIMS guys enrolled without ANY evidence of drinking.

1. Cell phone browsing history
2. Pulled over and arrested for being designated driver. Blood BAC, 0.0.

There are others.
 
Tools said:
2. Pulled over and arrested for being designated driver. Blood BAC, 0.0.
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Oh, you gotta tell us that story. What was the charge? Excessive sobriety? Maybe he said he was "driving drunks" and they heard "driving drunk?"
 
Classic, refused the breathalyzer for a blood test, so they had to arrest to get him to the station for the draw. They conjured up the reasonable doubt, which was no doubtedly the car full of drunk pilots for whom he was designated driving.

Anyhoo, had to report the arrest to his airline, HIMS reps forced him to rehab, where on the 4th week, he got the letter confirming 0.0….

And here we are…
 
172andyou said:
"United rejected his suggestion of using the Buddhism-based peer support group Refuge Recovery as an alternative, the commission said"
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Time for the airlines to have their own "12-step" or similar, to prevent a costly recurrence. Time also for the FAA to remove religion-based anything from its mandates, but we'll see about that.
 
Tools said:
Classic, refused the breathalyzer for a blood test, so they had to arrest to get him to the station for the draw. They conjured up the reasonable doubt, which was no doubtedly the car full of drunk pilots for whom he was designated driving.

Anyhoo, had to report the arrest to his airline, HIMS reps forced him to rehab, where on the 4th week, he got the letter confirming 0.0….

And here we are…
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Wait, so even after the 0.0 was confirmed he had to remain in HIMS? That's a special kind of kafkaesque nightmare. :eek:
 
whitepines said:
Wait, so even after the 0.0 was confirmed he had to remain in HIMS? That's a special kind of kafkaesque nightmare. :eek:
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It's called Tuesday in admin law. And the shills who get who derive a direct or proxy living as a result of that systemic injustice, defend it with a crap-eating grin. I'm surprised they haven't tried to discredit/smear @Tools anecdote already with their shilling ways.
 
Salty said:
The ones that need an abstinence based recovery group do, or did, prior to starting abstinence. Pretty silly comment.
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Since you don’t know anything about religion, one of the five moral precepts of the religion is to not consume intoxicating alcohol.
 
Clip4 said:
Since you don’t know anything about religion, one of the five moral precepts of the religion is to not consume intoxicating alcohol.
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Since you don’t know anything, a recovery group is for people doing something they don’t want to be doing.
 
Clip4 said:
Since you don’t know anything about religion, one of the five moral precepts of the religion is to not consume intoxicating alcohol.
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One of the most annoying things about humans is that they regularly do things against their religion, whether they want to or not. It may be a Buddhist tenet to not consume alcohol, but that doesn't automatically mean that all Buddhists always have the willpower to abstain from all alcohol or that a Buddhist never becomes an alcoholic. If humans could become good instantaneously by believing in something, no one would ever mock religion.
 
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Kenny Phillips said:
Time for the airlines to have their own "12-step" or similar, to prevent a costly recurrence. Time also for the FAA to remove religion-based anything from its mandates, but we'll see about that.
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Twelve-step is highly dubious to begin with, and if you remove intense religious belief by the participant, it doesn't work at all. Studies show that as a whole twelve step is about as effective as doing NOTHING at all. The analytical studies show it only directs you away from the habit with the belief (it doesn't necessarily need to be belief in God, but it takes some deep-seated belief system to reinforce the other parts).

Mere attendance at AA isn't going to instill a belief in God, so if that's not there it's largely a waste of time. The FAA doersn't give a damn. They see it only as a sign of the applicant doing his penance as part of the process.
 
flyingron said:
Twelve-step is highly dubious to begin with, and if you remove intense religious belief by the participant, it doesn't work at all. Studies show that as a whole twelve step is about as effective as doing NOTHING at all. The analytical studies show it only directs you away from the habit with the belief (it doesn't necessarily need to be belief in God, but it takes some deep-seated belief system to reinforce the other parts).

Mere attendance at AA isn't going to instill a belief in God, so if that's not there it's largely a waste of time. The FAA doersn't give a damn. They see it only as a sign of the applicant doing his penance as part of the process.
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Yep, seems to be more of a punishment, and a “we did everything we could” cya. It seems to me that random testing would be more fair and effective. I would quit flying before going to AA. Hell, I can’t imagine anything I wouldn’t choose before going to AA every day. But doing random testing, while annoying, I’d suffer through.
 
And THERE lies the rub. In every other SI, the FAA monitors, wants tests. When it comes to substance abuse “we DID everything we could”. That’s treating. That’s them directing how you are gonna treat.

Pretty sure a SI process for a heart condition that mandates a treatment that is 95% ineffective, would not last long…

UNLESS for some miraculous reason while this treatment is 95% ineffective for the general population is 90% effective for pilots! Wow! Amazing, more of this for all my friends!

Without seeing the obvious, they’re treating people without the heart condition!
 
flyingron said:
They see it only as a sign of the applicant doing his penance as part of the process.
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It's all about being a dancing monkey and jumping through their hoops. The reality is that the FAA just doesn't care that there are other options out there, regardless of efficacy. The penance for wanting something "other than AA" is added friction. If someone with their medical certificate on the line cares that deeply about not going to AA, then they should challenge the "treatment" prescribed by the FAA but accept the added friction. Sucks, sure, but thems is the facts.

My take, as a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 21+ years, attends AA regularly, does a daily 11th step meditation, and is decidedly anti-organized religion, is that the FAA doesn't realize--or care--that even AA acknowledges that itself is only one of a potentially infinite number of solutions (that may be unique to an individual).

The efficacy of any abstinence solution is likely dependent upon how ready an individual is to give up drinking (or drugs, or both) at that time. I've met a lot of people who "went to AA once or twice" but found it didn't help, so they stopped going. I also know several people who have gone to other non-12 step "rehab" facilities to get clean who have later gotten sober in AA.
 
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