Word: cloyd
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...might not have trusted Thomas Cloyd to drive you to the mall, let alone fly you cross-country in a commercial airliner. In 1986 Cloyd was arrested in Texas for drunken driving. In 1998 he admitted to police that he had been drinking when he pushed his wife around, spat on her and verbally abused her, and in 2000 he was arrested for belligerently harassing his neighbors while soused. So it's a wonder that Cloyd, 44, an America West Airlines pilot, was ever allowed to climb into the captain's seat of an Airbus A319...
Fortunately, that's as far as Cloyd and his co-pilot, Christopher Hughes, 41, got on July 1 before police stopped their America West flight on the Miami International Airport tarmac. Both were charged with a felony of being drunk while almost flying to Phoenix with 124 passengers aboard...
...percent of the nation's 114,000 airline pilots are randomly tested each year for alcohol. Most years see fewer than 10 violations and no cases like Cloyd's and Hughes'. But the warning signs in Cloyd's case were just the kind to evade industry scrutiny. Cloyd joined America West 12 years ago, but the airline knew nothing about his '86 DUI arrest (he was convicted on a lesser charge of reckless driving) because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not require pilots to report alcohol- or drug-related convictions until 1990, and the rule was not retroactive. America...
...Cloyd was not one of them. The Breathalyzer tests he and Hughes took in Miami suggest a bender that would make a frat house blush. America West bars pilots from drinking 12 hours before a flight; FAA rules say eight hours. Florida's legal blood-alcohol limit is .08. After he allegedly drank much of the night of June 30 in Miami's Coconut Grove section, say police, Cloyd's blood-alcohol level was still .091 the next morning, even as he was about to pilot the 10:38 a.m. flight. Hughes' was .084. Miami airport guards...
There's even a gated community called the Front Runners Club, which charges $500 per motor-home parking space. It's in this section that I find two black guys and tell them they must have taken a wrong turn, because racing is a white man's sport. Cloyd Nightingale, 46, turns to his friend Johnny Hill, 52, and they bust out laughing. "It's a white man's sport," Nightingale repeats to his friend. They're both truck drivers from Memphis, Tenn., and big race fans. "The flags don't bother us," says Hill. "It's not like...