Japan’s transport ministry is expanding its crackdown on a perceived drinking culture in the aviation industry.
It will mandate breathalyser tests for flight attendants, maintenance aircraft workers and flight operations managers.
The same rules it introduced to curb pilot drinking will be brought in for flight attendants.
They are now officially prohibited from consuming alcohol within eight hours of flight duty.
While over the limited pilots have made the headlines in recent months, a fewer number of incidents involving flight attendants have also occurred.
Engineers inspecting aircraft before departure will also be tested.
The eight-hour rule ‘from bottle to throttle’ for pilots has always been a requirement but had not been strictly enforced by airlines, and breathalyser tests were prevuiously not mandatory.
