Delta Air Lines had to quickly cancel a long-haul flight on Tuesday despite the crew arriving on time and there being no issues with the planes. Police arrested one of the pilots after she failed a breathalyzer test just as she was about to take to the controls. The pilot was detained without hesitation because we don't have drunken flying savants in real life like Denzel Washington in "Flight" or your buddy playing Microsoft Flight Simulator after a night out. Surprisingly, this isn't the first time that crew for the Atlanta-based behemoth has blown over the legal limit in recent years.
Delta Flight 205 was scheduled to fly from Stockholm Arlanda Airport in Sweden to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. However, the 8-hour, 45-minute flight never took off. The American woman was caught during a random pre-flight alcohol test onboard the aircraft at 9:15 a.m., according to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. Across the European Union and in the United States, random breathalyzer tests are administered to ensure that pilots hopping into the cockpit after downing a cocktail or two.
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A pilot failing a random alcohol test typically results in being permanently stripped of their license. However, the consequences don't end there. Last year, a Delta pilot was sentenced to 10 months in a Scottish jail after arriving drunk to fly out of Edinburgh International Airport. The 63-year-old captain was stopped at a security checkpoint. His bag was flagged while going through the scanner for containing more than the allowed amount of liquid. Security staff discovered two bottles of Jägermeister during a manual check, one of which was half empty. Then, a breathalyzer test determined that the pilot's blood alcohol content was over double the legal limit to fly (which is 0.02 by the way. Way lower than the legal limit for driving but it still seems high!)
Despite Delta's high-profile arrests, it's exceptionally rare for commercial pilots to fly while intoxicated. The FAA revealed that only 10 pilots failed the 12,480 random tests administered in 2015. A similar level of scrutiny was supposed to come to run-of-the-mill drivers on the road to curb DUIs. Congress directed NHTSA to devise a method for passively checking a driver's blood alcohol level, with a November 2024 deadline. However, the deadline has come and gone without a federal mandate for new cars despite our reality TV president being a teetotaler.
