PARIS – A United Airlines pilot was given a six-month suspended prison sentence by a French court on Tuesday.
The pilot showed up at work under the influence of alcohol to fly from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport to Washington Dulles Airport in Virginia on Sunday.
The 63-year-old American identified only as Henry W confessed before the court that he had only drunk two glasses of wine the previous night.
On the other hand, the police officers contended that the pilot was “showing signs of obvious drunkenness” when he arrived for work at 3 p.m.
Media reports said the pilot had a blood-alcohol level of 0.132% which is more than six times the legal limit for pilots in Europe and three times the Federal Aviation Administration’s limit.
Besides the sentence, the pilot was also fined 4,500 euros, and his license was suspended for a year, Le Parisien reported; French law enforcers said the breathalyser detected the pilot at 1.12 grams per liter.
The incident comes four years after United Airlines tightened its “bottle-to-throttle” rule which dictated that the pilots must have their last drink 12 hours before reporting for work.
This is not the first time a United Airlines pilot faced trouble for being drunk. In 2010, a pilot named Erwin Vermont Washington was removed from United Airlines Flight 949, which was scheduled to fly from London’s Heathrow Airport to Chicago after a co-worker suspected him of being drunk.
There have been multiple incidents of drunk pilots who came to work but were not allowed to steer the plane.
