Bob CollinsAs you approach the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, an electronic sign reminds you that the terrorist threat level is orange — still — and you should report suspicious activity.
Unless, you want to get where you’re going, apparently.
The government is stepping up its “if you see something, say something” campaign to try to get normally reticent individuals to be the eyes and ears against things that just don’t seem right.
For a California woman, however, what didn’t seem right is that the pilot smelled a little boozey.
The Web site, The Consumerist, reports:
The 51-year-old woman was waiting to fly home to Southern California from Atlanta when she and three other passengers had a brief conversation with one of the pilots of their delayed flight. When the pilot walked away from the group, one of her fellow passengers asked the others if they had also smelled alcohol on the pilot’s breath.
“A gentleman standing behind me asked, ‘Did anyone smell that? It smelled a little like vodka,'” recalled the woman. “We all agreed that he did smell alcohol, but we didn’t know if he had been drinking or what we should do about it.”
Officials tested the pilot and found he had not been drinking. Then, Delta officials kicked the woman off the flight.
In a post today on The Consumerist, a pilot says the airline was right:
One mistake that we have AMPLE time to prevent is flying under the influence of drugs or alcohol. How do we prevent it? We just don’t do it. Every pilot is well aware of the alcohol limits in aviation. The basic FAA limit is 8 hours between drinking and flying and a max blood alcohol level of 0.04%. Most airlines are more stringent than this. Do you really think a pilot who has invested years of his life, thousands of dollars, and tens of thousands of hours in the air will risk it all by having a drink before his flight? Of course not!
