On October 28th, the first officer on flight JL44 bound for Tokyo Haneda from London Heathrow was found approximately 10 times over the alcohol limit. This is obviously extremely dangerous towards the safety of the flight, as a drunk pilot can not think straight and make sensible decisions. The pilot, 44 year old Katsutoshi Jitsukawa, even admitted to doing a lot of drinking the night before. He was found with 189mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, which towers over the limit of 20mg. He was caught on the crew bus when the driver smelt alcohol, and called the police. He was set to fly the 777W in about 50 minutes, and the flight eventually took off with 2 pilots more than an hour later. Japan Airlines apologizes for the incident, stating that “safety is our utmost priority”, and will “implement immediate actions to prevent any future incident”.
Unfortunately, drunk pilots are nothing new to aviation. On January 2018, a British Airways pilot was found drunk while in the cockpit before his flight to Mauritius from London Gatwick, he was later sentenced to 8 months in jail. And on July 18th, 2016, 2 Air Transat pilots were allegedly found drunk before a flight from Glasgow to Toronto, but charges have been dropped since.
Really sad to see how pilots can be so wreckless before a flight, possibly if he didn’t get by security without getting caught, causing an accident and endangering the lives onboard, goodjob for the employees that caught him before he did any damage.
That may be a little bit extreme, as alcohol in moderation is typically not too bad. However there should definitely be measures taken to prevent drinking on/before the job.
Being intoxicated can be hazardous when driving or in this case flying. It’s not only deadly for yourself as you are not 100% to your senses but also everyone else in the plane, car, train, bus, you name it, whatever you are driving. And also those outside of your vehicle as well are at a all time danger.
From what I see it’s obvious when someone has had too much to drink so it’s up to the other crew to alert the authorities. As with the British Airways flight the other pilot called the police discreetly. It’s not any airlines fault it’s the fact that there is nothing in place like testing before the flights so as of now the crew have to attempt to look out for the passengers.
No, but we need testing. Other option, we wait till there is a serious accident then maybe people will notice and take action but we dont want that although i am sure thats what will happen.
