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Passengers aboard a flight from Moscow to New York December 28th staged a mini "rebellion" before take-off when they noticed that the pilot was inebriated. How did they come to this conclusion? Because it took him three tries to say the words "duration of flight." Also, as one of the passengers told the Moscow Times (which happened to have a reporter on board!): "I don't think there's anyone in Russia who doesn't know what a drunk person looks like."
The Times of London reports that when some passengers started complaining, flight attendants threatened to expel them from the Aeroflot Boeing 767 if they didn't stop "making trouble." Then, as the mutiny spread, airline reps came aboard to try to reassure the rabble-rousers, announcing that since the plane "practically flew itself," it was really "not such a big deal" if the pilot, Alexander Cheplevsky, was blotto.
A passenger elaborates: "At first, [the pilot] was looking at us like we were crazy. Then, when we wouldn't back down, he said 'I'll sit here quietly in a corner. We have three more pilots. I won't even touch the controls, I promise.'" Cheplevsky probably would have gotten his way, but socialite and television host Ksenia Sobchak happened to be on board and she made a big stink, demanding that all four pilots be replaced.
And so it was done. But an Aeroflot spokeswoman says tests revealed no trace of alcohol in the pilot's blood, and she blamed "mass psychosis" among passengers for incident. Oh, but then the company issued a statement saying that Mr Cheplevsky might have suffered a stroke just before the flight. He tells Komsomolskaya Pravda he had been celebrating his 54th birthday with friends the night before the flight, but maintains that he not been drinking.
It's been a rough week for Aeroflot; on Tuesday investigators revealed that the captain of an aircraft that crashed on a domestic flight in September, killing all 88 onboard, had alcohol in his system.
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Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.
I'm glad that Boris Yeltsin found unemployment, but this is rediculous!
Both Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy said that alcohol was the downfall of the Russian people and I have to say they were right. I lived in Russia for a year teaching ESL for the Russian government and some corporations. I have never witnessed as much inebriation as I did there. I would be going to work in the morning and at least five people (businessmen and workers, not bums) would be drinking a gin and tonic or beer at 8AM. It's not surprising that Aeroflot didn't make a big deal about this as 1) they are one of the worst airlines on the planet for safety and 2) the Russian mentality seems to be "if he can do his job while drinking let him do it!" Of course the problem with that in this situation is that most on the job errors don't result in turning you, passengers, and a 100M dollar machine into a smoking crater.
In Soviet Russia, plane flies you!
I can't believe someone actually said that...
Not to be pedantic, but this entire story is written as if there was proof of the pilot's inebriation up until the last two paragraphs. It really should say allegedly drunk, or similar. Just because a group of people think a guy is drunk, doesn't mean he actually is.
agreed
yeah but it was the airline who tested him.
And Ireland lost the potto famine.
potato ....I shame my family!
"Aeroflot ees not bad airline. Just because pilot ees horrible algogolic he steell arrive een Hudson Reever as on top of schedule."
russia lost the cold war because they all got drunk. Russians will drink all the Irish under the table. You've never seen alchoholism until you've been to russia. Ever wonder how Vodka became a staple drink? that shit's 80 proof. people over here drink it mixed with shit but the russians drink it neat. CRAZY!!!!
The Russian pilot is like the bizzaro Sully.
i took aeroflot from paris to moscow. it was the scariest thing i have ever done in my life. Not cause of the flight, but because there was the wreckage of a bombed plane on the runway of schermanyavo airport that I later found out held a russian reporter who was a critic of putin who was in it!
Scary, scary, scary.
"Sheremetnyevo ees very safe airport. You were een no danger at all seence you are not anti-Putin journaleest, Mattya."
I was dating a guy that rode that airline to Moscow and, whe I asked him how his flight was he said that as he was exiting the plane (yeah, outside...no gate)he noticed that tires on the landing gear were balding.
Was he good in the cossack?
I knew someone that worked for an American company in Russia. She had to do a lot of traveling within the country. She was instructed to never fly Aeroflot. If she had to fly from Moscow to an interior city, she had to fly Lufthansa to Hamburg and then on a non-Russian airline to the final destination.
The best part of this is the "socialite" who finally got them to switch pilots is often referred to as "Russia's Paris Hilton."
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/06/02/ksenia3606_narrowweb__300x503,0.jpg
At least thier paris hilton does something. Ours would be asking where he gots the free drinks.
their
And she's much hotter than PH.
Mr. Mel, I had the same thing happen to me. I had to fly from Petersburg to Moscow. I was told to pay the extra money and fly to Helsinki first on Finnair.
It's sad actually. The Russian people are pretty darn smart as a whole...well read..and some of the most 'thinking' people I have ever met. Alcohol just destroys the country...
Reminds me of the Futurama with Irish super civilization that invents whiskey.
She also told me that Aeroflot had numerous crashes and near misses, they were so routine that there was almost no press coverage.
"Once I flew Sibir Airlines plane from Novokuznetsk to Almaty. Wee noteeced strange light from rear the plane. I looked and saw tail section steel on tarmac. Pilot gave free vodka after we collected our bags from grass een runway. Eet was not bad treep at all, quite frankly."
Why does this reminds me of the US politics? First with W and now...."I screwed up - I won't touch the controls anymore!"
You don't have to go to Russia to witness the drunkenness. Just go to any neighborhood in South Brooklyn and you'll see for yourself.