A bit over a week ago I wrote about the airBaltic flight between Oslo and Chania which was delayed by nearly five hours after four of the five crew members (including the captain, first officer, and two flight attendants) had to be removed over suspicion of alcohol abuse. airBaltic was surprisingly transparent regarding the situation,…
Continue reading: REALLY Drunk airBaltic Crew Sentenced And Jailed
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Wow! It is crazy for that to happen, and on the same airline, less than a few weeks apart?! Unbelievable
@ Anonymous -- Just to clarify, this story is a follow up to that one. This didn't happen again, but rather more details have emerged of the initial incident.
Please don't let another airline hire them after they are done with their jail sentence!
You have to wonder if this is indicative of some messed up culture at that airline. I would hope that there is some kind of internal review to find out if this is a "one off".
For those of us in the States, our BAC standard relies upon g/ml of ethanol in the blood whereas Europe relies upon mg/ml of ethanol in the blood. So move the decimal point and the .08 g/ml (or .08 BAC) that we're familiar with for driving becomes .80 mg/ml for Europe. Meaning that this guy was was about 1.7x more intoxicated that what is acceptable to operate a motor vehicle in the US.
@James: While the result of your calculation is correct, the calculation itself IS NOT. 1g (gram) equals 1000mg (milligram), so .08g/ml would be 80mg/ml. The real difference is that BAC is specified as a "percentage" (parts per one hundred) in the US, while in Europe it's usually measured as "permille" (parts per one thousand).
Actually, it's probably because it was a group that they didn't stop. A single person might go, yeah, it's 8, gotta stop. A group will have one person say, "just one more" and then someone else agrees, and the next thing you know, bad decisions are being made. It's group think with alcohol and fatigue added in.