WEBSITE EDITOR

Got a nice email from Mike B. in Hawaii telling of all the meetings that pilots can go to when they are on a layover on Kauai. He has listed a website for all the meetings. Click here to go to the Hawaii page. --ed

FAA Issues New DUI -- DWI Policy

According the Winter Edition of The Federal Air Surgeon's Medical Bulletin, the FAA has a new policy regarding its treatment of an airman who receives his or her first DUI (driving under the influence) or DWI (driving while intoxicated). Up until now, an airman's first DUI/DWI offense was a "gimme". Although the aviation medical examiner ("AME") was supposed to obtain court documents relating to the offense and question the airman about his or her alcohol or drug use to determine if the airman has a substance abuse problem, the FAA did not require any further information or explanation from the airman and the DUI/DWI did not have any adverse impact on the airman's ability to obtain a medical certificate. However, that has changed.

Under the new policy, when an airman reports a DUI/DWI on his or her medical application, the airman will still have to provide the AME with copies of the court documents relating to the offense and the AME will question the airman about his or her alcohol or drug use to determine if the airman has a substance abuse problem. However, if the airman has a blood alcohol level greater than 0.15 or refused to let the police take a sample, the AME may not issue the medical certificate and will have to defer the medical application to Aeromedical Certification in Oklahoma City. When the Aeromedical folks receive the application, they will require that the airman obtain a substance abuse evaluation from a recognized counselor before they will consider issuing the airman a medical certificate.

At first blush, this new policy may appear to create more incentive for an airman not to disclose the DUI/DWI on the medical application. After all, you might wonder, "if I don't disclose the offense, how will the FAA know?" Well, when an airman signs the medical application, he or she gives the FAA permission to search the National Driver Registry. Each week, the FAA Security Division sends airmen-identifying features to the registry and, if they receive a "hit," the FAA checks the airman’s medical examination records to see if the airman reported the DUI/DWI as required. And keep in mind, the consequences for failing to disclose remain severe: suspension of airmen and medical certificates for failing to report within 60 days under FAR 61.15(e) and revocation of all airmen certificates for failure to disclose on the medical application.

Unfortunately, this policy change, coupled with the recent change to FAA Form 8500-8 which now requires disclosure of "arrests" in addition to the previously required "convictions and administrative actions," will certainly create new problems for an airman with a first time DUI/DWI.

WE CAN NOW CONFIRM THAT AT THE 75TH INTERNATIONAL AA CONVENTION IN SAN ANTONIO ON JULY 1-2-3-4, 2009 (IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING OUR OWN C0NVENTION JUNE 29-JULY 1) THAT BIRDS OF A FEATHER WILL HAVE THEIR OWN 'HOSPITALITY ROOM' IN THE MILAM ROOM AT THE MARRIOTT RIVERWALK HOTEL DOWNTOWN. WE WILL BE ABLE TO REACH OUT AND SHARE OUR MESSAGE WITH ANY AVIATOR OR PROFESSIONAL AIRMAN WHO HAPPENS TO VISIT OUR ROOM. IN THE PAST WE HAD TO SHARE OUR ROOM WITH SEVERAL OTHER ORGANIZATIONS. WE WILL MAN THE ROOM WITH VARIOUS BIRDS THROUGHOUT THE CONVENTION PERIOD. OUR HOSPITALITY ROOM WILL HAVE A MENTION IN THE AA CONVENTION PROGRAM AS TO LOCATION.

ALSO, BIRDS OF A FEATHER WILL AGAIN HAVE THEIR OWN SPECIAL MEETING HALL THAT SHOULD ACCOMMODATE APPROXIMATELY 600 PEOPLE FOR OUR ONE TIME 'FORUM' WHICH WILL CONSIST OF A MODERATOR AND THREE TO FOUR BIRDS SHARING THEIR EXPERIENCE, STRENGTH AND HOPE. THIS EVENT IS TENTATIVELY SET TO OCCUR ON SATURDAY, JULY 3 OF THE INTERNATIONAL AA EVENT, AND WILL BE MENTIONED IN THE AA CONVENTION LITERATURE AND PROGRAM.

The Denver Nest has make it more interesting to attend Birds of a Feather in Denver by changing their meeting place as they now meet in two different locations every month. The First Monday of the month finds them at the AA Club called Orchard Club South which is located in South Denver at the northwest Corner of Orchard Rd. and I-25. The meeting starts at 1600. On the Third Monday of the month they have returned to La Mariposa Restaurant, an excellent Mexican restaurant, located across Quebec Street from the United Airlines Training Center near the old Stapleton Airport. Come for dinner at 1730 and stay for the meeting. Thanks for supporting the Denver nest and their new meeting place changes.

They have 3 regular members and a couple of others who seem to come in and go out. The meeting is held in one member's home...certainly the nicest venue for an AA meeting I have ever attended...it is every Wednesday and they asked me to encourage others to visit them. Even though the three regulars know each other's story well, there is that special connection that pilots in the program have, where aviation plays such a big part of their drinking and recovery story and it is just easier to be honest in a meeting full of pilots.

Just an update on the IAH nest. We celebrated our 2 year anniversary last week with a “Happy Birds-day!” Cake and goodies! I gave a brief timeline of where I was and how the nest came about to the group. A topic of “It works if you work it and how far we’ve come and why” tended to prevail through the discussion. We will be handing over the chairperson spot for the next yearly service. He should be contacting you soon.

I'm not sure which is the best online AA meeting website, but here is a link to the one I use:

http://stepchat.com/

It is very user friendly, has lots of meetings at various times of the day, and the meetings are conducted pretty much like a live, in-person meeting except online it's like a chat room. The StepChat members are courteous in sharing, and I feel better after attending a StepChat meeting, sort of like the way I feel after attending a regular meeting at the Coral Room.

I have attended StepChat AA meetings from various foreign cities when I couldn't find an AA meeting in English, but I suppose the online meetings would also help a pilot stuck at a U.S. airport hotel with no transportation as well.

Enjoy!

Yours in Sobriety,

Dan W.

Hi-

Wanted to share how my day started.
I was in a big hurry on my way to work when I had to stop at a crosswalk. Pissed that I had to wait for a pedestrian to cross, I was very much in my head about my hi-bottom problems. Looking at the person in the crosswalk nudged me into my judgmental mode that allows me to feel better about myself in these situations. You see this guy was disheveled and obviously "less than". It was then that I noticed in the pile of books in his hand were the Big Book and the 12 & 12.

I stopped him to let him know that I loved his choice of reading material. He was a little startled, but when I told him I was one too, he smiled brightly and said he was 21 days sober and was the best he has been in 30 years. He thanked me for talking to him. I would like to think that our brief talk helped him, but it was what it did for me that proves how this thing of ours works. I am in the moment and in so much gratitude right now.

I'm so glad that I had to wait at that crosswalk.

Fred

I really enjoyed this past weekend. I loved the presentation on Friday as both Fr. Mark and Dave talked about the transition into recovery.

I thought Scott R on Saturday was amazing. What a testament of this program. I am in awe of how he walked through all of that. He deserves the riches of sobriety, he certainly paid his dues. Most of all, I loved learning more about BOAF. What a wonderful support/organization. When I was in direct care, I spoke of this program, now I feel I understand it more clearly. I will pass my experience onto the staff, especially of those working with the airline members.

George Plesniak, MS, ACRPS, CAC
Director of Utilization Review
Father Martin's ASHLEY - www.fathermartinsashley.org
410-273-2234 - 800-799-4673 x234
gplesniak@fmashley.com

Just wanted to take a second to thank you all for your hospitality, kindness and fellowship this past weekend. I have worked in the field of Addiction Treatment for over 20 years , 14 of those with Fathers Martin’s Ashley , and have actually had the honor of working directly with some of the Birds and their families. This past weekend was and will remain one of the highlights of my years of work in the field. The closeness and unity that I was allowed to be part of was something that few will get to experience and be a part of. I hope that our time with you on Friday and Saturday was worthwhile and productive, and if the opportunity to ever work with you all again comes up I would clearly welcome that chance. Thanks again for what I consider the opportunity of a lifetime

Keeping Carrying Your Message

Dave Matukaitis
Ravendave56@aol.com

Dear BOAF,

I was so gratified to read the kudos to my dear friend Cindy Rucker on your site. Cindy loved flying with every particle of her body and worked tirelessly to become a pilot. She was a fabulous graphic artist (just ask the Los Angeles Times) and a good musician/ songwriter as well.

The day in 1977 when she was accepted as a pilot for Western Airlines was a banner day for her and for women everywhere. All those who knew her thought her fearless and were stunned to discover she was an alcoholic--she covered it well. But like everything else she did, Cindy tackled it head on with the help of BOAF, the support of friends and family, AA, Buzz A., and the Betty Ford Center. She worked hard for more understanding from the airlines and government and educated everyone possible as to the plight of airline personnel with substance abuse.

I miss her still...thank you for keeping her memory alive.

Ronny Schiff

Here are a couple of letters from folks in our organization about the recent passing of Richey G. :

You had better enlarge the website because there is NO way one can write a small article on Richey Grude. She had tooooooooooooo many great attributes and meant so much to tooooo many of us for a small article. She was one swell lady and well loved by all of us. You could only look at Lee's eyes and see the love he had for her and visa versa. One great couple to be remembered by many.

Ann B.

This seems so appropriate for our dear Richey:

There Is No Death

I am standing on the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an
object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at
length, she is a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky
come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says “There! She’s gone!” Gone where? Gone
from my sight, that’s all. She is just as large in mast and hull and
spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to
bear her load of living weight to her destined harbor.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when
someone at my side says “There! She’s gone!”; there are other eyes
watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout
“There she comes!”

And that is dying.

Mike B.

Dear Editor,

What a difference a year makes!

A year ago, when flying into Sydney, Australia, my typical experience would have been like this: Land about 6 pm, get to the hotel around 7, exhausted and many, many time zones out of sync. Meet in the lobby at 7:30 and go out with my crew for dinner and beers. Ditch my crew around midnight, when they would go back to the hotel, or I would go off in search of "more excitement" (after all, I'm half-way around the world, so who will ever know what I do?) Drink beer all night long. Stumble back to the hotel about daylight. Toss and turn all day. Meet in the lobby at 5 pm for pick up, feeling like crap and praying I don't get a breathalyzer.

Fast forward a year, one stint in a treatment center, HIMS, a good sponsor, probably several hundred meetings, countless hours of step work, prayer and reading the Big Book.

Get to Sydney about 6 pm. Go out and get a quick bite to eat. Sleep a good, long, restful sleep. Wake up the next morning and go to a 7 am AA meeting a short walk from the hotel. Have breakfast. Walk around town, enjoying the exotic sights and sounds. See a woman obviously distrought sitting on a curb down an alley talking on her cell phone. Feel compassion for her. Notice there is a flower vendor at the corner. Buy her flowers and offer them to her. She refuses to accept them, obviously very disturbed a stranger is trying to give her flowers! Don't argue. Exit the alley and notice the street sign, "Angel Place," so figure she'll be okay. Now walking around town holding a bouquet of pink flowers. A woman walks right up to me, sticks her face in the flowers and says, "Are these for me?" I say, "Why, yes, they are!" Hand them to her and continue my walk.

Stop for a sandwich and am given a HUGE sandwich, only half of which I can eat. Wonder what I should do with the other half, I don't want to waste it, but it won't last until I get back to the hotel. Notice a homeless guy begging at the corner. "Would you like a sandwich?" He eagerly accepts it.

Go to a noon Big Book meeting and listen.

Walk back to the hotel and a get a good nap before pick up. Meet in the lobby for pick up, ready to go and wide awake, feeling good for the long flight coming up.

A friend back home said in the rooms, "Act right. You'll soon think right, and then after a while you'll feel right." Well, thanks to my Higher Power guiding me around, I am discovering this is indeed true. And I can't tell you how grateful I am to the AA program for making my layovers infinitely better than they used to be. It definitely feels good to feel right!

Yours in Sobriety,
D. W.

I would like to borrow a Richeyism to describe a recent event.

I recently had the pleasure of doing a two week cruise from San Diego through the cannel to Fort Lauderdale.

I went to the "Friends of Bill" meetings each day and for the first few days there were only two of us. We just had an informal meeting and mostly talked about our programs. One day we were talking about meetings we attend and she said to me that one of her favorite meetings was one in DC. that was a bunch of " mostly retired pilots". It was called Birds of a Feather.

After I got up off the floor, I said that I new some of those people and dropped a few names on her.(Probably a rule violation). We had a good laugh about that and became instant friends.

We were later joined by more people and had a group of about five. Two of those had recent relapses. One after 17 years and one after 24 years. I could have told their stories before they did. Stopped going to meetings, stopped working the program, etc. Anyway it was a real lesson to listen to them. The other fellow that joined us was having a little more trouble figuring things out. He was a retired Naval Officer and had been through the Navy Program. He was only drinking " no alcohol" beer. At least that was what he said. I suggested to him, that it wasn't really "NO" alcohol, and it was a very dangerous path. He eventually stopped coming.

The best part is that I learned a lot from every one of these people and it made my sobriety even better.

Regards to All. Dick B.

Dear Editor,

So here I am in Budapest, Hungary, newly sober and in need of quieting down the committee in my head. OK, check the web. Ahhh, English AA meetings three times a week on nearby Kertesz Street! It gets dark early this time of year in Budapest, so by 6 pm, as I am walking to the meeting, it feels like it is the middle of the night. Walk four streets up, turn left, find the building number, and stand there looking at a building with broken windows, trash all over the place and the universal graffiti painted everywhere. Obviously, a building not yet cleaned up from the 1956 revolution....

Oh, well, walk inside and the lobby smells like urine but, lo and behold, a sheet of paper reading "AA - One Flight Up, On The Left" taped to the wall. Up I go and sure enough, in a small room obviously used as a sort of kindergarten during the day, there are three or four people making coffee, passing out Big Books, and setting up AA posters and pamphlet racks. Everyone is friendly, and I am welcomed by an older Hungarian gentleman who can barely speak English. Soon there are six of us, the Hungarian gentleman who I later discover always reads the "How It Works" so that=2 0he can practice his English, a Hungarian lady wrapped in several layers of warm clothes, a disheveled and very harrassed looking Englishman, and two other Americans like me, here for work or pleasure.

The meeting opens with the Hungarian lady chairing. One of us reads the Preamble, the elderly Hungarian gentleman reads "How It Works," and we are all asked if anyone needs a chip. Since I am the newcomer here, I am given a copy of "As Bill Sees It" and asked to pick a reading for tonight's topic. I choose #176, "Domination and Demand." I read it and speak for about ten minutes about how I relate to it. We go around the room sharing our experience, strength and hope. We end the meeting with the Seventh Tradition, someone reads the Twelve Traditions and, standing in a circle holding hands, we pray the Serenity Prayer and end with the familiar, "It works if you work it so work it your worth it!"

I am at home, here in this small AA meeting in a foreign country where the language and people are as exotic to me as anywhere I have ever been. My new friends all have stories I know from having lived them. The details are different, but the thoughts and feelings are the same, and the committee inside my head is once again quiet.

After the meeting we all shake hands and wish each other well. I leave, and, as I go down the stairs of this building that looks like it is next in line for the demolition crew, I remember t hat the most dangerous neighborhood for me is not here on this dark street, but the one I carry around with me between my ears, and I feel very blessed and grateful to be part of the AA fellowship.

Yours In Sobriety,
Dan W.
Miami

Hi, my name is Tom C and I cannot believe that I have not found BOAF until today.
If I would have in my AA journey then I may still be flying.
Too bad for me but timing is everything.
Anyway, where to go from here. I sent a qualification e-mail to the POC and would like to share my story and attend a convention and meet other pilots with AA.

Thanks,

Tom C
Monument, CO

"Once during a period of weekend piloting, I flew a light plane into the clouds over some hilly terrain and got lost. The plane was without blind-flight instruments and I was without training in blind flying, and therefore in moment-to-moment peril of a fatal tailspin. I tried to climb out of the cloudbank but couldn't make it; it was too high. To try to get under it might wind me up in a pile of burning junk on a hillside, or in a power line. Whether I went up, or down, or stayed where I was, my life was in great danger. I was a clammy, sweaty scared.

"Though not at that time religiously inclined, I prayed. Then I put the nose toward the ground and held it on a steep glide, peering ahead into the murk. Presently I saw a farmhouse immediately ahead. I held a wing on it, circling, and saw a small pasture where a crash landing could be made. Gliding in for the landing, scarcely ten feet off the ground, I could see under the cloud structure. The farmhouse was high on a hillside; below was clear air over a long valley. I flew on. In a quarter of an hour I was safely landed at my destination airport, limp with gratitude and wonder. A power greater than myself had, in response to my prayer, restored me to safety! This happened seven years before I came into AA.

"I did not hang onto this spiritual insight. After a day or two of awed reflection I forgot it, resumed my usual ways and usual drinking, which was progressing toward a climax. Seven years later, again fogged in, with all courses of action blocked in alcoholic impasse, I met some people who had "come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Remembering then my deliverance from the cloud-shrouded hills, it was easier than it might otherwise have been to believe as they did."

- The AA Grapevine, 1954

Like many pilots, I first got interested in flying airplanes by reading books as a youngster and watching flying movies late into the night when in grade school and high school. One movie that really stood out for me was God is my Copilot. I really enjoyed that one and I have since then read the book by Colonel Robert L. Scott at least three times.

As my drinking started and my alcoholism progressed I would never pass up the opportunity to watch these old movies when they would come on late night television. Many times I sat there and fantasized that I was General Frank Savage taking over and whipping to shape a squadron of B-17 pilots like Gregory Peck did in 12 O'Clock High.

I truly was suffering from delusions of grandeur, a true character defect if there ever is one. As my recovery progressed I realized that if I was ever to be truly sober I would have to "deflate my ego" to the extent that I could finally address these defects and get my life more on a realistic, even keel. It took several years and I continue to confront an ego that will get the better of me if I allow it.

One way I have found that helps me is allow my higher power to be more active in my life. And so now here comes my point: In the movies I am always in control of everything. There is only room for God to be my co-pilot. In recovery, I have to make more room in my life for him than that. So that is why I say to pilots who are new or years into the program that: "if God is your copilot, it's time to switch seats".

Step 1: I had an "Old Clunker" of an airplane parked at the airport. I had just about given up on it but decided to make a wholehearted attempt to restore it.

Step 8: We made a list of all the parts that were needed and got together and went over them.

Step 9: I admitted I hadn't checked the oil and fluids properly, or fixed the other things that were going wrong. It was my responsibility to take care of the plane, and I had not. I wanted to help, but being unfamiliar with the process, I allowed the mechanic to fix things. The airplane turned out beautifully!

Step 10: I check the oil, fluids, tires etc. more regularly, and when I don't the engine doesn't hum.

Step 11: I call on the mechanic whenever there is trouble, asking him to fix the plane.

Step 12: That mechanic and I have become such close friends that we decided to take a trip across the country, and we stopped to help all that needed it along the way.