Tests Show Drug Use by 3 Controllers, FAA Says
Three air traffic controllers at an air traffic center in Palmdale used cocaine, amphetamines or marijuana during off-duty hours, the Federal Aviation Administration charged Tuesday.
Reaching the halfway point in its investigation into drug use among controllers at the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Center in Palmdale, the FAA said it has “exonerated” 15 other controllers and allowed them to return to their radar screens.
Don Early, the Palmdale center’s manager, told a press conference that 16 other controllers and five center employees described only as “non-controllers” still are under investigation.
The 34 controllers were pulled off their screens Aug. 21, administered drug tests and asked questions about rumors of off-duty drug use by their colleagues, particularly at a party attended by two-dozen controllers.
Early, who provided few details about the investigation’s first conclusions, said the determination of drug use was based on the urinalyses and the FAA’s “security investigation.”
Once administrators determine that an employee has used drugs on or off the job, he has 15 days to decide whether to enter a private drug rehabilitation program at his own expense or be fired, Early said.
During the rehabilitative period, the employees are reassigned to other “administrative” duties or placed on paid leave, Early said. When they return, the employees are periodically “monitored” to check for drugs.
This fall, the FAA plans to begin testing all controllers for drugs as part of the routine annual physical exam.
Early refused to disclose which drugs each of the three controllers is alleged to have used. He also refused to discuss whether it was FAA policy to require full-fledged rehabilitation programs for controllers who were found to have used only marijuana, saying such decisions are made by an FAA flight surgeon on a case-by-case basis.
When the investigation was announced, Early said employees were suspected of using cocaine and hashish. However, tests conducted by a North Carolina laboratory for the FAA also found amphetamines and marijuana in the three cases but failed to detect hashish.
Three Palmdale controllers who were targeted in the investigation attended Early’s press conference Tuesday. They challenged the accuracy of the tests and criticized the FAA for allegedly ignoring independent drug tests that many controllers took in an effort to defend themselves.
Controller Kathy Heet said one of the three alleged drug users had paid for two independent urinalyses and one blood test after the FAA tested him. While the controller’s FAA test was positive, all of his private tests were negative, she said.
Heet, who said she is one of the 16 controllers still under investigation, said the controller in question took his independent tests within two hours after the FAA urinalyses, a negligible time difference.
Stays in Body
Of the three drugs found by the FAA lab, cocaine stays in the body the briefest amount of time, usually disappearing after two days. Amphetamines can be detected two to four days after use and marijuana often can be detected several weeks after it is smoked.
A spokesman for the FAA’s lab, CompuChem Laboratories, said any “positive” readings were reconfirmed by a test employing gas chromatography and mass spectrography.
The 34 controllers comprise about a fifth of the controllers who work at the Palmdale center, which is responsible for guiding all airplanes in and out of dozens of Southern California airports once they leave the jurisdiction of local airport control towers.
