Business Notes

The last thing an airline passenger wants is a pilot whose head is in the clouds. The Supreme Court last week reduced the likelihood of getting one when it let stand a Federal Aviation Administration rule requiring a "comprehensive antidrug program" -- random, unannounced urine tests. The action affects more than half a million workers in the air-travel industry, including flight crews and air-traffic controllers.

A San Diego airline pilot launched the legal challenge to the FAA rule, citing Fourth Amendment prohibitions of unreasonable searches. San Francisco's Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FAA, and the high court leaves that decision intact -- ending the case, but not the controversy. "There's not really a serious drug problem in the federal work force," says a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Government Employees, which has filed several anti-drug-test lawsuits. "We think the government could be better spending the $79 million that it's got committed to drug testing this year."