11.3 Alcohol, Drugs and Crew Resource Management

Alcohol and Drugs

CASA prohibits operating a remotely piloted aircraft under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This is not a guideline — it is a hard rule, and it sits inside the same aviation safety framework that governs manned pilots. The fact that you are on the ground, not in the air, does not change the rule, because the consequences of an impaired drone flight (a multi-kilogram aircraft hitting a person, a vehicle, or a controlled-airspace aircraft) are just as severe.

The 8-hour rule of thumb

The aviation rule of thumb is a minimum of 8 hours from bottle to throttle — that is, at least 8 hours between your last alcoholic drink and operating an aircraft. Two things to understand about this rule:

• It is a minimum, not a guarantee. If you drank heavily, or late into the night, 8 hours is not enough. Blood alcohol may still be over zero, and more importantly, impairment can persist after blood alcohol returns to zero — judgement, reaction time and coordination can still be degraded.
• It is a rule of thumb, not a CASA number. CASA's rule is "not under the influence." The 8-hour figure is the conservative minimum most operators use to make sure they meet the "not under the influence" standard. When in doubt, add margin.

Random drug and alcohol testing

Random drug and alcohol testing applies in Australian aviation. CASA and industry drug-and-alcohol testing programmes can test pilots, including remote pilots, at any time. A positive result, or a refusal to be tested, has serious consequences for your licence and your ability to work. The safe position is zero alcohol before flying and no impairing illicit drugs, full stop.

Medication

Prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medication can impair. This is the trap many pilots miss: a drug being prescribed by a doctor, or bought off a pharmacy shelf, does not mean it is safe to fly on.

Examples that commonly impair:

• Antihistamines (especially first-generation, like those in many cold and allergy tablets) — drowsiness, slowed reaction time.
• Strong painkillers — opioid and codeine-based medication impairs judgement and alertness.
• Sleep aids — the impairment can last well past the sleep.
• Some blood pressure and anxiety medications — light-headedness, reduced alertness.

What to do about medication

• Check before you fly. Ask your doctor or pharmacist specifically: "Is this safe for an aviation pilot to operate on?" Do not accept a general "it's fine for most people."
• If unsure, do not fly. The IMSAFE "M" is there for exactly this case.
• Read the label. "May cause drowsiness" and "do not drive or operate machinery" apply to drones too — an RPA is machinery.
• New medication — treat the first dose as a non-flying day to see how it affects you.

Crew Resource Management for RPAS

Crew resource management (CRM) is the structured use of all available resources — people, equipment and information — to operate safely. In manned aviation it is about pilots, cabin crew and air traffic control. In RPAS it is much simpler: it is about the pilot and the observer/spotter.

Many drone jobs are one-person operations, and that is legal for many flights. But any flight with a crew has a CRM responsibility, and the quality of the crew's communication is a human-factor safety system in its own right.

Pilot and observer/spotter roles

• Pilot (remote pilot) — flies the aircraft, watches telemetry and the flight path, makes the go/no-go and abort decisions. Authority over the flight.
• Observer / spotter — maintains visual line-of-sight (VLOS) on the RPA at all times, scans for traffic, people and hazards, and makes callouts to the pilot. The pilot cannot watch the screen and the sky at once; the spotter is the sky.

Brief the roles before takeoff

Before every crewed flight, brief:

• Who is pilot, who is spotter. No ambiguity.
• What each person is watching. Pilot: aircraft and flight. Spotter: VLOS, traffic, ground.
• What the callouts are. Agree the language: "traffic, two o'clock, low" or "people on the ground, left of the landing zone."
• Who can call abort. Anyone on the crew can call abort; the pilot acts on it.

Assertive callouts

Callouts must be assertive, clear and timely. A spotter who says, "um, I think there might be a plane somewhere over there" has given the pilot nothing useful. A spotter who says, "drone above the tree line, aircraft on downwind, west, low" has given the pilot a decision they can act on in one second.

Hesitation in a spotter's warning can cause the hazard to arrive first. The counter is to brief assertive callouts as the standard before takeoff, so no one feels rude being direct.

Use the spotter for VLOS and hazards

The spotter is not a passenger. Their job is to cover exactly what the pilot cannot watch while flying:

• VLOS — keeping eyes on the drone so the pilot does not have to rely on the screen.
• Traffic — other aircraft, especially light aircraft and helicopters that may not show on a drone's air-traffic display.
• People — bystanders, children, animals walking into the operating area or the landing zone.
• Weather changes — wind pick-up, gust fronts, cloud movement that the pilot may not feel while focused on the screen.

A well-briefed pilot-spotter team is a stronger safety system than a single pilot, because two people scanning two different pictures cover more than one person trying to watch both.

Putting Chapter 7 Together

The three sections of this chapter are one system:

1. IMSAFE asks: am I fit to fly? (alcohol, drugs, medication, fatigue, complacency all live here).
2. Situational awareness asks: once I am flying, am I keeping the whole picture?
3. CRM asks: if I have a crew, are we working as one safety system?

Get all three right and you have removed most of the human-factor risk from your RPAS operation. Get any one wrong and the aircraft, the people on the ground, and your licence are all at risk — no matter how good your flying skills are.