Air India Grounds Two More Pilots as Screens Go National

Two more Air India pilots were taken off duty after initial drug screens in mid-August. The confirmatory lab reports that would settle those cases have not been published.

The pair were flagged inside a one-time group screen that began on August 13, 2026, after the captain of Phuket-Delhi flight AI 2379 returned a confirmatory hit for a psychoactive substance. That screen has since spread. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has told every Indian airline to run a one-time test on its pilots by July 2027, a queue of close to 14,000 crew, after years in which the drug rule only required a random 10 percent a year.

Two More Air India Screens Still Await a Lab

People familiar with the screening said 300 to 400 of the group’s about 5,000 pilots had been tested by August 17, and that two of those results came back non-negative. A non-negative screen means the first pass found a marker that needs a second test. It is not a confirmed positive.

Both pilots were taken off the flying roster while the second sample went to a designated lab. Captain Mohan Ranganathan, an aviation safety consultant, said the pilots have to stay grounded until those results arrive. Air India said it did not have details on the sample used for the confirmatory test, on the pilots’ status after the first test, or on any other particulars of the two cases.

The group screen itself was a choice, not a rule. In an internal note on August 13, the airline told crew it already met DGCA requirements and still wanted to go further, ordering “a full screening of all Group pilots for any substances or medications that are not permitted under prevailing regulations.” The work covers about 3,500 Air India pilots and about 1,500 at Air India Express, and it sits on top of the random testing the carrier already runs.

How the One Percent Figure Was Built

Captain C.S. Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots, treated the Phuket captain and the two new flags as one pile. “As of now, three out of the 300-odd pilots tested by Air India, which amounts to one per cent, have tested positive. This is very high and strict action is required, and saliva testing is recommended,” he said.

Three of 300 is 1 percent. The mass screen, counted on its own, is two flags in 300 to 400 people, or 0.5 percent to 0.67 percent, and those two flags are still unconfirmed. The Phuket captain was tested after a serious incident, not as part of the later sweep.

THE 1 PERCENT COUNT

The first-wave non-negative screening results are what put saliva testing and a higher random quota on the minister’s desk. They are also a thin sample on which to price a whole profession.

Breath Tests Catch Alcohol Before Every Flight

India already runs a hard alcohol rule. Crew on scheduled flights take a pre-flight breath test at the first departure airport of a duty period. Rule 24 of the Aircraft Rules, 1937, bars alcoholic drink, sedative, narcotic, or stimulant drug preparations within 12 hours of a flight, and any detectable alcohol grounds the pilot. The alcohol Civil Aviation Requirement was tightened again on February 9, 2026, with camera recording of breath tests, faster reporting of missed or positive cases, and a three-strike path that can cancel a licence.

Drugs never got that daily gate. The psychoactive-substance CAR, issued in September 2021 and effective January 31, 2022, tells scheduled operators and air navigation providers to randomly test at least 10 percent of flight crew and air traffic controllers each year. The sample is urine, split on collection into two sealed containers. Container A is screened at once. If that pass is non-negative, the person leaves safety-sensitive duty and container B goes to a lab that uses high-complexity instruments.

The panel covers amphetamines, opiates and their metabolites, cannabis as THC, cocaine, barbiturates, and benzodiazepines. A medical review officer then asks whether a confirmed result came from a prescribed medicine, such as a codeine painkiller that can trip an opiate line. None of that happens at the jet bridge before pushback. Until this summer, a pilot could fly a full year without drawing a drug test at all, as long as that person was not in the 10 percent lot, not newly hired, and not sitting in a post-incident chair.

That gap is the bill now coming due. Alcohol is checked before every duty period because it clears in hours and a breath device answers on the spot. Cannabis metabolites can sit in urine for days after occasional use and for weeks in regular users, which is why a landing-day screen can record earlier exposure without proving the captain was impaired at cruise.

The Federation Wants Swabs at the Airport

Randhawa wrote to the DGCA and the civil aviation secretary on August 17 asking for saliva, or oral-fluid, testing. He said Australia already uses that method for pilots, that a swab can be taken before a trip, and that a result can be out in 15 minutes.

For pilots entrusted with the lives of passengers and crew, random psychoactive substance testing must be sufficiently frequent, genuinely random, and unpredictable to provide meaningful deterrence and continuous safety assurance.

Federation of Indian Pilots, letter to DGCA, August 17, 2026

The same letter asked the regulator to lift the annual random floor from 10 percent to at least 25 percent, to allow the same pilot to be drawn more than once, and to add extra tests where a risk case is clear. FIP said the aim is not a yearly headcount. It is a chance of being picked that stays real in every month.

WHAT FIP PUT ON THE DGCA DESK

• Higher quota: Raise random coverage from 10 percent to at least 25 percent a year, with repeat draws allowed.
• Airport swabs: Add oral-fluid testing for random, targeted, and high-volume checks, and keep urine where a longer window is needed.
• Twelve-month trial: Run a pilot programme on accuracy, collection time, crew downtime, lab confirmation, chain of custody, and cost.
• Medicine advice: Build a Check Before You Take channel so crew can ask, in confidence, whether a prescription, herb, or tonic will fail a screen.
• Due process: Treat a non-negative as a flag, not proof of impairment, until the lab and a medical review officer have finished.

Australia’s regulator does use saliva for drugs. CASA tests for drugs using oral fluid and uses breath for alcohol, under the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998. A first positive drug swab is checked again on the spot; a second positive sample goes to an approved lab, and the person stops safety-sensitive work until that result is in. Over-the-counter cold tablets can still trip an amphetamine line, which is why a medical review officer sits in the loop there too.

FIP is not asking India to throw urine out. It wants swabs for speed at airports and urine for the longer look, plus a year of data before anyone pretends the hybrid is settled.

America Already Tests 25 Percent of Crew

The 25 percent figure FIP wants is not a new global ceiling. For calendar year 2026 the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration kept a 25 percent random drug-testing rate for safety-sensitive aviation employees, and 10 percent for random alcohol tests. That drug rate stays at 25 percent only while the industry’s reported random positive rate remains under 1.00 percent. In 2024 that rate was 0.816 percent. At or above 1.00 percent, the FAA’s own rule pushes the minimum to 50 percent.

Those U.S. figures are confirmed random positives across a large workforce, not two unconfirmed flags in a few hundred Air India tests. They still show why Randhawa reached for 1 percent as a tripwire. India has been running less than half the U.S. random drug draw, with no pre-flight drug gate at all, while building one of the world’s busiest domestic networks.

Civil Aviation Minister K. Rammohan Naidu went further on August 25. He said the ministry’s view, in talks with the DGCA, is that every commercial pilot should go through a test once a year at a random time, and that India would be the first country to set that bar. He also said the operational cost of testing the whole workforce has to be weighed with safety. IndiGo already tests a higher share of its pilots than the 10 percent floor, which is one reason a national jump would land unevenly.

What a Non-Negative Result Does to a Roster

Under the CAR, a non-negative screen takes a pilot off safety-sensitive duty at once. The seat empties before the lab speaks. If the confirmatory test is positive and the medical review officer rules out a legitimate medicine, the first offence sends the employee to rehab or a specialist programme. Return needs a new negative test and a fitness certificate from the organisation’s medical in-charge. A second confirmed positive suspends the licence for three years. A third cancels it.

That ladder is why two unconfirmed flags still matter to a schedule. Each one is a pairing hole until the lab files. Multiply a 0.5 percent to 1 percent first-pass rate across close to 14,000 pilots and the roster question is no longer theoretical, even if many of those flags later clear as food, tonic, or a painkiller.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The two extra pilots: Non-negative on the first pass in the Air India group screen, off the roster, confirmatory reports not published.
• The Phuket captain: Post-flight screen after AI 2379; officials identified marijuana; AAIB described screening and confirmatory tests as non-negative; Air India ended employment on September 4.
• The co-pilot: Negative on screening and confirmatory tests; both crew passed the breathalyser.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The two lab reports: No public confirmatory result, no named substance, no medical-review finding.
• Cause of the drop: AAIB recorded a brief loss of pressure in the green, blue, and yellow hydraulic systems on the Airbus A320 registered VT-EXO and did not tie the drug finding to the altitude upset.

AI 2379 was carrying 145 people, 137 passengers including three infants and eight crew, when it lost about 300 feet in cruise on August 4. Twenty passengers and four cabin crew were injured. Both pilots were taken off the roster that night. The drug finding is a safety fact on its own. It is not, in the preliminary file, the explanation for the hydraulics.

The Regulator Now Queues Every Airline

The August 17 letter and the two extra flags did not stay inside Air India. Naidu said on September 10 that a draft of tighter psychoactive-substance rules is due from the DGCA by the end of September. While that draft is still being written, the regulator has already told carriers to finish a one-time test of every airline pilot by July 2027. Testing, officials said, has already started.

FROM ONE COCKPIT TO THE NATIONAL QUEUE

1. August 4, 2026: AI 2379 drops about 300 feet on the Phuket-Delhi sector; 24 people are hurt; both pilots are screened on arrival.
2. August 13, 2026: Air India starts a mandatory one-time screen of about 5,000 group pilots, above the 10 percent CAR floor.
3. August 17, 2026: Two more pilots are flagged non-negative in the first 300 to 400 tests; FIP files for 25 percent random testing and saliva swabs.
4. August 25, 2026: Naidu says every commercial pilot should face a random test once a year.
5. September 4, 2026: AAIB’s preliminary report flags the captain’s non-negative confirmatory test as a serious concern and asks DGCA to act; Air India ends the captain’s employment.
6. September 10, 2026: DGCA’s one-time screen of close to 14,000 airline pilots, to be finished by July 2027, becomes public, with a draft CAR still promised this month.

The two extra Air India pilots are still waiting on a lab that has not spoken in public. Around them, a rule that asked for 10 percent a year has been stretched into a twelve-month pass through almost the entire flying workforce, using the same urine split that cannot be read at the gate. Whether the September draft adds the swabs FIP asked for, or only a larger version of the 2022 design, is the decision that will decide how many seats go empty the next time a first-pass strip turns a colour.