The incident couldn’t come at a tenser time. Already, air travelers are besieged almost daily with dire travel alerts and airport evacuations. And now this. Especially troubling: the pilots were caught only because of a savvy screener. “It surprises me that we didn’t have a more fail-safe method,” says U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, who works on airline-industry issues.

But how common are these cases? Each year the FAA randomly tests 10 percent of pilots and flight attendants for alcohol. Two years ago some 10,000 tests yielded only five violations; last year there were nine; and this year seven prior to Cloyd’s and Hughes’s. “This is not a widespread problem,” says Paul Takemoto, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, which isn’t yet proposing any reforms in the wake of last week’s incident.

That rankles FAA critics, who believe the agency’s regulations are too permis-sive. If only 10 percent of pilots are tested for alcohol, says Mary Schiavo, a former FAA inspector general, “what are the odds you’re drunk on the day you’re tested?” Further, she says, the FAA requires pilots to report alcohol-related incidents only if they’re caught driving a vehicle under the influence. Yet another critique: the FAA requires that only eight hours pass from “bottle to throttle,” whereas airlines like America West enforce a 12-hour rule.

As with most safety measures, some rogues will always slip by. Cloyd and Hughes won’t be piloting planes for a while, though. Both have been fired, charged with felonies that could carry five-year sentences and stripped of their licenses. (Cloyd and Hughes did not return repeated calls seeking comment.) There’s a chance the two could get their wings back; since their inception in 1972, alcohol-treatment programs run by the FAA, the airlines and the unions have rehabilitated about 1,000 pilots. “These pilots have to make a commitment to remain alcohol-free for the rest of their lives,” says John Jordan, federal air surgeon for the FAA. But for the moment, travelers have two fewer threats to worry about at the airport.