Alcohol, Drug Testing Rates Remain Unchanged

The FAA determined that the minimum percentage rate for substance-abuse testing this year will remain at 25 percent of covered aviation employees for random drug testing and 10 percent for random alcohol testing. The rates will remain the same because data indicates that the positive rate for drug tests over the last two years was less than 1 percent and the positive rate for alcohol tests in the past two years was less than 0.5 percent. If either of these violation rates had been 1 percent or higher, the testing rates would have jumped to 50 percent of covered employees.