Delta pilot caught intoxicated given 10-month prison sentence

A Delta Airlines pilot got 10 months in prison for going to work at Scotland’s Edinburgh Airport while drunk.

The captain of the flight from Edinburgh to New York, Lawrence Russell Jr. , who is 63 years old and from America, was supposed to fly the plane on June 16, 2023. But when he took a test to check how much alcohol was in his blood, it was too much. The court said on Tuesday that he had two bottles of Jägermeister liqueur in his bag when he came to work, and one of them was half full.

The court in Scotland said Russell lost his job at Delta because the transatlantic flight was canceled.

A Delta spokesperson said: “We knew about this happening and took the pilot out of work while we look into it with the Scottish authorities. We’re sorry to the people on the plane who were affected. ”

In court, Sheriff Alison Stirling told Russell: “Your bag had two bottles of Jägermeister, and one was open and almost half full. ” The police were called because you were dressed like a pilot. The police came soon after. You told the police your information and said you were a captain at Delta Airlines.

The pilot admitted to drinking the night before and failed a breath test when he came to work in the morning. He got in trouble and then gave a blood sample. The sample also had too much of something in it.

In Scotland, it’s against the law to fly a plane if you have more than 20 milligrams of alcohol in your body. But you can drive a car as long as you have less than 50 milligrams of alcohol in your body. In the United States, pilots cannot fly if they have a blood alcohol level of 0. 04 or higherIt’s against the rules for anyone to work on a plane within eight hours of drinking alcohol or while drunk.

The court said Russell used to drink too much but he got help and finished a program. Now he is doing much better and doesn’t drink as much.

The court said he had driven drunk two times before this, but he had not been in trouble with the law in Britain before.

The captain of the Boeing-767 plane admitted he was guilty of the charges on March 5. Because he admitted it early, his punishment was reduced from 15 months to 10 months, the court said.

The sheriff said that the prison time was right because the crime was serious and had the potential to cause a lot of harm.

The court statement said that Russell felt sorry for causing problems for his employer and the passengers because the flight had to be cancelled.

Russell’s lawyer, Pamela Rodgers, said she couldn’t say more about the punishment because of confidentiality.