The Paris-Texas flight ended up in the Bobigny court where an American plane pilot was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for being checked while intoxicated just before taking the controls of a flight, the prosecutor's office reported Wednesday.
Sunday afternoon, the air transport gendarmerie of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport proceeded to the alcohol control of this American national, an hour before the takeoff for the United States of his Boeing 777 which was to carry 267 passengers to Dallas.
"The pasty mouth, the glassy eyes"
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The captain, whose gendarmes noted that he had a pasty mouth, glassy eyes and difficulty expressing himself, was finally controlled by breathalyzer at 0.59mg / l and 0.56mg / l, "said on Twitter, renamed X, the prosecutor of Bobigny Eric Mathais. A blood alcohol level six times higher than the legal limit.
Placed in custody, the pilot was tried Tuesday in immediate appearance in court. According to Le Parisien, which attended the hearing and revealed the information, the 63-year-old defendant, of the American company United Airlines, argued before doubtful judges to have drunk only two glasses of wine the day before. The French justice has clipped his wings by sentencing him in addition to one year of suspension of his flight authorization and 4500 euros fine. "To my knowledge, this is a first at Roissy airport and the Bobigny court. The fight against the dangerousness of alcohol in means of transport is also, and oh how much, in air transport!", commented the prosecutor Eric Mathais.
Similar condemnations have already taken place around the world. In 2018, a British court sentenced a Japan Airlines co-pilot to ten months in prison for alcohol levels ten times above the legal threshold. And in 2015, four crew members of a Latvian carrier were jailed for up to ten months for consuming bottles of whisky and beers shortly before their plane left Norway.