Alcoholic plane pilot arrested drunk with 2 bottles of Jägermeister: hundreds of people prepared to board

The pilot was sentenced to 10 months in prison. Unsplash Illustration – Wenhao Ruan

A plane pilot was sentenced to 10 months in prison on Tuesday March 19, 2024. He was due to board a flight from Edinburgh to New York when he tested positive for alcohol.

He was getting ready to pilot a plane over the Atlantic Ocean. Pilot sentenced to prison sentence for trying to board a flight from Edinburgh to New York while drunk, reports The Guardian.

Two bottles of alcohol found in his hand luggage

Captain Russell was arrested with two bottles of Jägermeister in his hand luggage during a routine search at Edinburgh Airport in last June. One of the containers was half empty.

Arrested by the police while preparing to pilot a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, he underwent further examinations which revealed that he had "49 mg of alcohol in 100 ml of blood". Note that the legal limit is set at 20 mg/100 ml of blood for pilots of Delta Airlines, its employer.

He hadn’not had a drink in 277 days

Tried in Scotland, at the Edinburgh court, Captain Russell was sentenced to 10 months in prison. He pleaded guilty, admitting that&rsquo ;he actually showed up for work under the influence of alcohol.

The 63-year-old man had already been convicted twice in the United States for driving under the influence alcohol. His lawyer, Pamela Rodgers, insisted that her client "was full of remorse" during the hearing.

The pilot suffers from alcoholism and is "convalescent". On the day of the events, he did not& rsquo;had not drunk for 277 days and completed 12 steps of the rehabilitation program.

Despite these efforts, the court considered that the endangerment had been too great not to punish him: "The consequences could have been catastrophic . He showed total disregard for the safety of his passengers and crew. The pilot of a commercial plane holds the lives of hundreds of people in his hands. He would have put them all in danger."