(Sept. 15) -- Dutch police say they have arrested a drunken Delta Airlines pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner -- while the plane was on the runway for a trans-Atlantic flight to New Jersey with nearly 200 people aboard.
After fielding an anonymous tip, police at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport pulled the 52-year-old captain off the airliner and gave him a breath test,Bloomberg News reported. Readings showed the pilot had a blood-alcohol (Sept. 15) -- Dutch police say they have arrested a drunken Delta Airlines pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner -- while the plane was on the runway for a trans-Atlantic flight to New Jersey with nearly 200 people aboard. After fielding an anonymous tip, police at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport pulled the 52-year-old captain off the airliner and gave him a breath test,Bloomberg News reported. Readings showed the pilot had a blood-alcohol content of 0.023 percent, a spokesman for the Netherlands Police Agencytold CNN. He was fined more than $900 and then released, the spokesman said.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration doesn't allow pilots to fly within eight hours of drinking alcohol. The pilot's blood-alcohol level also came in higher than the legal driving limit in the Netherlands, which has some of Europe's toughest drunken-driving laws. Holland also prohibits pilots from flying within 10 hours of drinking.
The unidentified pilot lives in Woodbury, N.J. The Boeing 767 he was piloting Tuesday had left the gate and was taxiing toward the runway when police hurried out to intercept the flight, Bloomberg reported.
Delta said its Flight 35 from Amsterdam to Newark was canceled "out of concern that a crew member appeared to be unfit for duty." In a statement on its website, the airline said it is cooperating with a police investigation, and conducting its own probe into the crew member, who has been suspended from duty.
All 196 passengers were moved to other flights, Delta said.
Tuesday's arrest is at least the third such incident on a commercial airliner in recent months. Last November, a United Airlines pilot failed a breath test in London and was charged with operating an aircraft under the influence. An American Airlines pilot was arrested in London in May 2009, after passengers complained that he smelled of alcohol before a flight to Chicago.
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