A Japan Airlines pilot who was arrested in Britain shortly before a flight for being drunk was almost 10 times over the legal blood alcohol limit for a pilot, the London police said.<\/p>\n
The incident came a day after another Japanese carrier apologised for multiple delays after a hungover pilot called in sick.<\/p>\n
Japan Airlines executives told reporters in Japan that the co-pilot cleared an in-house breath test but aroused the suspicion of a bus driver taking him to the plane at Heathrow Airport on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The co-pilot, identified as Katsutoshi Jitsukawa, 42, was arrested by the British police and required to undergo a blood test that confirmed those results.<\/p>\n
He had reportedly consumed two bottles of wine and more than 1.8 litres of beer over six hours on the night before the flight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are certain wasn\u2019t conducted properly,\u201d JAL communications chief Muneaki Kitahara told reporters Thursday.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the London police said a test on the co-pilot taken 50 minutes before the flight\u2019s scheduled departure revealed 189 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood in his system almost 10 times the 20-milligram limit for a pilot.<\/p>\n
The pilot later pleaded guilty before a court to being over the legal limit, and is expected to be sentenced on November 29.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe company sincerely apologises to the passengers and to all affected by the employee\u2019s actions,\u201d JAL said in a press release.<\/p>\n
The incident came just a day after All Nippon Airways revealed a hung-over pilot had caused multiple flight delays.<\/p>\n
The male pilot in his 40s called in sick after a night of drinking on the remote resort island of Ishigaki in southern Okinawa prefecture, the company said.<\/p>\n
The last-minute sickie forced the airline to delay five flights linking Okinawa island and smaller regional islands, affecting 619 passengers.<\/p>\n
Following the two incidents, the transport ministry urged airline companies to strictly comply with rules on drinking.<\/p>\n
But under Japan\u2019s current system, while plane crew members are banned from drinking within eight hours of working, there is no legal limit set and breath tests are not required.<\/p>\n
Airlines have their own regulations, with JAL saying its rules banned pilots from drinking 12 hours before flying — a limit they now said would be pushed back to 24 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Japan Airlines pilot who was arrested in Britain shortly before a flight for being drunk was almost 10 times over the legal blood alcohol limit for a pilot, the London police said. The incident came a day after another Japanese carrier apologised for multiple delays after a hungover pilot called in sick. Japan Airlines […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46238,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46236\/revisions\/46238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}