Pilot won’t face charge in drinking incident

Friday, April 15, 2005 | 10:01 a.m.

A former pilot for AirTran Airways who was arrested for alleged intoxication just minutes before he was to fly a passenger jet from McCarran International Airport to Atlanta will not face criminal charges.

Clark County District Attorney David Roger said police were unable to establish that 38-year-old Oliver Paul Reason broke the law because state law doesn't specify the legal limit for blood-alcohol levels in pilots.

Nevada's limit of blood-alcohol content for motorists is 0.08 percent. Reason's initial breath test registered a 0.091 percent blood-alcohol level, authorities said.

Roger said Reason passed the field sobriety test conducted by the arresting officers and a blood test taken four hours later showed a blood-alcohol content of .01.

Roger said a secondary issue was the fact Reason was arrested in the galley and there was no evidence to suggest he was in the cockpit of the plane. He said under the state statute only "flying and operating and aircraft" is mentioned, and Reason was not doing so at the time of his arrest.

Roger said there was simply "not enough evidence against Reason for charges to be filed" by Clark County prosecutors.

"I don't think the legislature has spent a lot of time and effort on the issue of intoxicated pilots and they have left it up to the the Federal Aviation Administration," Roger said.

Federal law prohibits pilots from flying if they have blood-alcohol levels of more than 0.04 percent.

AirTran fired Reason in the days after his arrest and he now faces the possibility of sanctions by the Federal Aviation Administration, which could suspend or revoke his license.

On Jan. 13 a checkpoint screener for the Transportation Security Administration detected the smell of alcohol on Reason as he went through security and alerted police, who found Reason in the cockpit of the Boeing aircraft preparing for the red-eye flight

Police found Reason, a Newnon, Ga., resident, in the cockpit of the aircraft preparing for the take-off of the red-eye flight. He had been in Las Vegas on a 24-hour layover before returning to Atlanta,