14 DAY TRIAL // A 48-year-old pilot now finds himself in police custody following his having one too many drinks and believing that the alcohol he had consumed was no reason for him not to fly a plane from Minneapolis to New York.
The pilots name is Kolbjorn Jarle Kristiansen, and at the moment of his arrest the police found that he had had as much alcohol as was needed for him to blow over the 0.04 blood-alcohol limit for pilots.
Granted, the alcohol limit for pilots is significantly lower than that for drivers, yet this does not change the fact that people who are in the business of flying planes should stay clear of alcohol altogether.
More precisely, they are not allowed to drink alcoholic beverages for at least eight hours prior to their flying a plane, seeing how alcohol tends to have long-lasting effects on an individual's organism.
As the Federal Aviation Administration puts it, “A hangover effect may be just as dangerous as the intoxication itself. Consider the effects of a hangover. Eight hours from 'bottle to throttle' does not mean you are in the best physical condition to fly or that your blood-alcohol concentration is below the legal limits.”
Apparently, the police officers only came to investigate the situation after a worker in charge of inspecting the plane tipped them off and said that, while carrying out the preflight checks in the cockpit of the Bombardier CRJ-700 aircraft, he realized that the pilot smelled like booze.
Daily Mail quotes airport spokesperson Patrick Hogan, who made a case of how, “There was a witness who smelled what they thought was alcohol on the pilot's breath and notified police.”
This incident caused the flight from Minneapolis to New York to be postponed for about two and a half hours. Thus, as soon as a replacement pilot was found, the 53 passengers aboard the plane were sent on their way.