Alcohol has reportedly been showing up on American Airlines pilots' meal trays, and it's hiding in the dessert. A memo from the Allied Pilots Association, the union that represents American's pilots, warns that a tiramisu on some crew meals in Phoenix is made with alcohol that never gets cooked off, so it may still be there when a pilot eats it. Nobody, not even the union, can say how much is in a single serving. Its advice is blunt: don't eat it, even if that means flying hungry, because for a pilot, a positive alcohol test can be career-threatening.
The memo, which was shared online on Friday, came from the union's Aeromedical and HIMS Committee, the group that handles pilot health and alcohol issues. It applies to crews based in Phoenix, one of American's biggest hubs, and to crews passing through.
What the Memo Says
According to the memo, the catering company that supplies American's crew meals in Phoenix included the alcohol-laced tiramisu on some trays. The union says it can't tell how much alcohol is in a single serving, or whether eating one could affect a pilot who's then asked to take an alcohol test.
The committee says it's working with American's Phoenix flight office to get the dessert pulled and replaced. Until then, the instruction is simple. "Accepting an incomplete crew meal is preferable to risking the potential consequences associated with alcohol consumption while on duty," the memo reads.
Any pilot who already ate it and is worried about being fit to fly is told to contact their union representatives right away, and not to let schedule pressure influence that decision. Few memos have ever made skipping dessert sound so serious.
Why a Dessert Is a Big Deal
For most people, a spoonful of tiramisu is nothing. For a pilot, the rules leave almost no room. Federal rules bar pilots from flying within eight hours of drinking alcohol or with a blood alcohol level of 0.04 or higher, half the legal driving limit in most US states. Pilots can also be tested at random while on duty, and a reading as low as 0.02 is enough to pull them off the job for at least eight hours.
The bigger problem is what happens after a positive test. A flagged result can trigger an investigation, a possible referral to the industry's alcohol monitoring program and a serious mark on a pilot's record, which is why a union would rather its pilots go hungry than take the chance. The odds of one dessert pushing anyone over a limit are probably small, but "probably" isn't a word pilots want to bet a career on.
Another Catering Headache for American
It's not American's only catering headache lately. The airline has had trouble with meals at New York JFK, and it spent months flying meals for its London flights across the Atlantic from the US before switching back to food cooked in London this week.
The tiramisu issue only affects crew meals, according to the memo, and there's no sign it changes anything for passengers or flight schedules. If you're flying out of Phoenix on American, your flight should run as normal. Your pilot just might be a little hungrier than usual.
