Air Baltic Crew escorterd from AC by police.
 

An Air Baltic charter flight in OSL, with a 05:45 departure was delayed as both pilots and 2 F/As were taken away by the authorities for suspicion of being over the blood alcohol limit of 0.2.
Ground staff explained the crew had fallen ill.:sad:

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/l...en/a/23502093/

Another head line: (in Norwegian)
Police stopped flight over the limit
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/ir...g-8118834.html

Latvian Air Baltic pilot and three crew members were pulled off a Greece-bound passenger plane in Oslo early Saturday after failing a breathalyser test before take-off, Norwegian police said.

"Results of the breathalyser tests confirmed that four of the five crew members ... were above the legal alcohol limit of 0.2 promille," Romerike police prosecutor Edith Ek Sorensen told AFP.

The pilot, co-pilot and two stewardesses -- all from Latvia and employed by Air Baltic -- were taken into police custody and escorted to hospital for blood tests to confirm the breathalyser tests.

Results were expected later.

Sorensen said police had acted after receiving a tipoff from an anonymous caller around 4:00 am (0200 GMT).

The four risk up to two years in prison if found guilty.

Sorensen would not comment on the flight's destination, but Norwegian daily Dagbladet said it was a tour group flight operated by the Norwegian group Startour headed for Chania, Greece, with 109 passengers on board.

Looks like the crew is going to jail...

The police was alerted by a hotel employee at 04:00.
Don't drink and fly in Norway, they don't like it and get grumpy:sad:

From today's VG Tabloid:

06:48 DEL Del
- Vil fengsle promillebesetning
- Vi har pågrepet fire besetningsmedlemmer på bakgrunn av mistanke om promille. De sitter i arresten i Lillestrøm, siktet for promille. De vil bli fremstilt for varetektsfengsling mandag, sier jourhavende jurist Charlotte Visdal Benneche i Romerike Politidistrikt til VG.

Det var lørdag morgen at politiet rykket ut til flyet, etter tips fra en hotellansatt der besetningen hadde overnattet. Fire medlemmer blåste rødt.

Besetningen er siktet etter luftfartslovens paragraf 611 (bruk av alkohol i tjeneste, promillegrense 0,2) og 612 (forbud mot inntak av alkohol åtte timer før tjeneste). Tre av besetningsmedlemmene er avhørt, den fjerde sitter i avhør nå, opplyser politiet til VG.

Company culture?
 

Wow. 4 crew members in the same set of crew. None of them said "no, wait a minute, we cant do this...". All 4 continued drinking and all 4 were willing to show up for work.
Then it might be a problem with the company culture about saying "no" and reporting.

I crew member under influence is bad enough, imagine both pilots and half the cabin crew. That is a different level of danger to safety for that flight. :ugh:

When your company culture is pay to fly for your pilots, you can't expect much standards.

I guess that that hotel will now lose its airline customers.

P2F
 

Ahhh, so we have already established that these 4 local Baltic crew members are P2F? Even the cabin?

Anyway, I hope there will be more random tests in the future. It is needed. Also tests for drugs. Only pilots I dont want to fly with are worried for those tests.

If the drivers are P2F, then the folks in the cabin will be P2S as well, although for only 10% of the 20K plus of the co-pilots.

I got arrested once (Post flight) along with the co-pilot near Newark, BUT I never got detained as the company accountant had enough cash (1K usd) to bail us both out after we signed the papers. Case dismissed 6 months later cos the part time summer Policeman did not contact the FAA first and he had no real evidence that we were guilty of disorderly conduct likely to endanger public safety (It's a general charge that can apply to many different activities).

We were just doing a spot or two of low flying for a film crew, but the chaps on patrol though we must be drunk (Bumpy sea breeze front).
It turned out to be a classic wrongful arrest case, which I knew although the co didn't help things by saying he had not touched a drop of anything in the last 8 hours (It was a 10 hour flight). The ground crew boss did not help either, as once we had shut the engines down, he got on the external emergency PA system and shouted, "Come out with your hands up"!

it seems drunk pilots problem isn't just russian but more soviet one

I think you'll find that the majority of recent cases are western European and North American.

The amount of wilful ignorance here seems quite prevalent, as well as all kind of absurd excuses (drinks bought by 'clients' which can't be refused -8H prior departure. WTF?).

Most everybody who's been in this business long enough knows, that sometimes a meal and a few drinks amongst crew members post landing goes a bit south. And with a limit as low as 0.02 it doesn't take much more than a hours sleep to little, or a beer too many, for the alkometer to raise the alarm.

Now the vast, overwhelming, majority knows when and where to call it a day, but it is inevitable that once in a while someone will push it a bit too far and get his or her arse busted. While we are all only humans, that is still a major violation of the trust bestowed in the holder of a commercial aviation license, something we all knew about when we signed up.

So how about we talk openly about this, and help each other as aviation professionals to ensure this doesn't happen to any of us. The camaraderie formed between crew members working, and resting, together is a very special part of this industry. Let's use that to protect ourselves, by helping each other calling it day before the line is crossed.

SMT Member, some common sense here at last :ok:

G-CPTN, We can dream Eh ? :rolleyes:

I was drinking a few beers with a guy a bar in an SE Asian country, when he left he told me he'd be flying to Oz in a few hours. I did my best to convince him to call in sick. I didn't call the police. Still wondering - maybe naively - what else I could have done, calling the chief pilot, crew scheduling, or dispatch? I don't want to be perceived as a troublemaker, this was a senior, well connected local captain, and I was the junior, contract foreigner. A similar situation in (insert another SE asian country here): Senior, local captain snorting cocaine a few hours before duty. The guy who gets to fly all the VIP's. How do you deal with those?

You do what you failed to do both times: Call the police. They have the investigative ability to find out if those pilots are actually scheduled to fly, and to take the appropriate action if they are.

Alternatively, you can call the airline.

The days of raucous room parties seem to be long gone. Thank God I retired years ago. I'm sure many on here could recall the 'goings on' at said room parties.

What do crews do on night stops these days? Facebook? Twitter?

@Intruder,

Obviously you have not lived or worked in said SE Asian countries. Would you do either of your suggested courses of action, the chances are that the police would take YOU for a breathalyzer test just before your next flight, and surprise, surprise the test would fail...

You would have plenty of time alone to ponder why taking this action is perhaps not the best idea.

When I read the clip from the Norwegian news, it became obvious that this wasn't your usual alcohol control.

The police was called by a hotel employee.

This isn't your average "a pint and some chatter" when the hotel personnel gets worried enough to do something...

I give my respects to the employee who took his/her responsibility for other peoples' lives and safety.

Thank you to the Hotel staff and the Authorities.
 

I would like to thank the hotel staff for their intervention when they felt concerned. Further thank you to the Norwegian authorities for reacting in a timely manner. The Crew members concerned are entitled to due process, and may have a case to answer or not.

I'd also like to extend thanks to the media for not publishing names and pictures.

Having worked in SE Asia I would wonder if, perhaps, you weren't being set up Deptrai to see if you would report it, only to discover he was positioning as a pax? Just a thought.

Sorry to be damn lazy but what is 0.02 in real terms ? And, if you consume that but lay off for 8 - 12 hrs before reporting for duty, does it still show up - ?

I agree with the Baby-boomers. Best days are well & truly over. We partied until we dropped but were very careful about the 8hr rule & mindful where it was 12. I and many others would declare a "stop drinking time" before we bust open the bar. Never had any issues.

Or the hotel employee was unhappy about the tip...

No subject
 

Being professional is also about looking after yourself.
Nothing wrong with the hotel employee.
Same in Singapore - someone says you spat your chewing gum on the side-walk - you will get a fine without a DNA verification...
Poor sods.
:mad:

We don't know what their readings were. Higher than 0.02 they were technically over the limit, but were they drunk and incapable if only just over?

A sane person between those internet witch hunters...

Just out of curiosity; are you seriously suggesting that whenever someone's alcohol level exceeds the limit, an assessment should be made (by whom?) of whether that person is drunk and incapable?

What degree of "drunk and incapable" would be allowable in your eyes, I wonder?

I'm reminded of the the graduations in Oklahoma State Police reports that I became only too familiar with when our Commando Battery was sent to Fort Sill for 6 months, about a million years ago...

Happy Drunk - Ornery Drunk - Fighting Drunk - Dead Drunk.

Where would you draw the line for aircrew, I ask myself? Would you allow Ornery Drunk for cabin staff, but only Happy Drunk for the Flight Deck?

I do recall many occasions in the bar at the old Gulf Hotel in Bahrain when, at about 0430, one of our more mature DC3 F/Os, with a double-barrelled name I won't repeat, would look around at the assembled crowd of oilmen and others getting in their last drinks while in transit to Abu Dhabi and announce "'Bye all, I'm off to the airport to go to work. If you're coming with me (most were) you need to get your skatesh on", and then he would stagger out. Those days are, I'm happy to so, over.

0.2 is less than half the 0.5 limit for driving a car in most of Europe. I believe the 0.5 limit can be easily breached by a man having 2 pints of beer. So one unit of alcohol (roughly) in your system will probably put the average man over the flying limit, guranteed for a woman. The average human body removes one unit per hour from their system, average pint or small glass of wine is 2 units.

The limit is the limit. We all know what it is.

There are no excuses to be over it so if you are then you get what you deserve.

Doesn't matter if you're capable, incapable, drunk or not.

I love a drink but I won't touch one within 24 hours of flying and that's about the only reasonable way of ensuring I don't get pinched by the Rozzers.

Then you probably only got it half right. Every regulation and SOP I've ever seen didn't just specify a time limit, it also required one to not be "under the influence". If no BAC limit was published, that meant you had to be at a reading of zero to be legal. I'd hazard a guess there were a few occasions when you were above that.

A gas sniffer and retina imager could be connected to the FMS and interconnected to the Cops, then when the crew enters the cockpit an alarm sounds and gives you a chance to do a runner. Some of the younger P2Fers can still outrun both the CAA and the Peelers.

When I was a youngster I used to fly with a hangover sometimes, but after we lost a chap or two in some rather serious incidents it did finally result in my neurons being reconnected to stop me consumating any alcohol if I was flying within the richta hangover scale of 2 days.

The FAA had 8 hrs for years. Some companies more than that, 12 hrs comes to mind. Other companies had a total ban. (Which was ignored) :sad:

The pilots can't have been P2F. If they were they would not have been able to afford to get drunk in Norway.

This is going to upset Mr and Mrs Indignant but here goes.

I'm a non drinker, not a tea totaller but if I never drank another drop of alcohol again, I wouldn't throw myself off Beachy Head.

What I fail to understand is, with the limit so low, why do crews feel the need to have ANY alcohol the night before, be it one, two or a barrel full? So, if you have a meal post landing, why does it have to include booze when you know a) the limit is bonkers low and b) you are flying over 100 people the next day.

Is it the rule these days that a post flight meal has to include alcohol?

In some French buses the driver has to use his recorded breathalbreath yser before departure. Very easy to use , but what if he drinks after departure some mix in a coca-cola bottle ? In case of accident, the driver with some alcohol is always supposed to be the cause of the accident during trial and punished is alcohol or not the cause of the accident. Very dissuasive.

Is that to encourage people to lay off the boobs - er, booze? :}

haha I'd like to see one of those!

Sounds like a dream job to me...

Many years ago flying with AF on a Trans Atlantic flight (707, it was as I say sometime ago) I was a little surprised to see a bottle of Red wine go into the flight deck for the crew with their meals. When I mentioned it to cabin crew they appeared quite concerned that I was concerned about it, it was "natural on such a long flight". Thought this practice had gone, but on a trip out to the Far East I was told of similar thing by a young women who had seen the same on an AF Jumbo in the 1980,s, I would assume this practice has now stopped.


Cheers
Mr Mac

Latest, according to Norwegian daily "Dagbladet" are the breathalyzer results: CC both 1.0, co-pilot 1.4 and Captain 0.4. All in ‰.
Per

Nah, quite a few of us never drink while on the job, especially with early starts like these Air Baltic guys.
With a 3 day night-stop in a good place, yeah we may go to town, but for a 10 or 12 hour stop, why bother...?:sad: