Drunk Aeroflot Captain

The Russian airline Aeroflot has apologised to passengers on a transatlantic flight after one of its pilots made such a slurred preflight announcement it created panic on the plane that he was drunk.” That’s from a story in today’s London Guardian newspaper, one of several to report on the details of a Dec. 28 flight that have recently become public. London’s Daily Mail writes “Captain Alexander Cheplevsky sparked panic as Aeroflot flight 315 from Moscow to New York was about to take off. He started his pre-flight ‘welcome aboard’ message in Russian that was barely intelligible, then switched to English that was even worse.”

“The first thought that occurred to me was, ‘This guy is drunk,’ ” Flight 315 passenger Khatuna Kobiashvili tells The Moscow Times. “His speech was so slurred it was hard to tell what language he was speaking.” The Moscow Times adds that “as passengers, including a Moscow Times reporter, related their concerns to the flight crew, they were told to ‘stop making trouble’ or get off the Boeing 767 jet. A passenger who called Aeroflot’s head office received a similar rebuff.”

But passengers apparently weren’t going to take “no” for an answer, according to the Times of London. The paper writes “as the rebellion spread, Aeroflot representatives boarded the aircraft to try to calm down the 300 passengers. One sought to reassure them by announcing that it was ‘not such a big deal’ if the pilot was drunk because the aircraft practically flew itself.” The pilot refused to leave the cockpit for about half an hour, before finally emerging, according to the reports.

That did little to dissuade passengers’ fears that he was drunk, according to the Moscow Times. The paper writes customers on the flight described him as “red-faced with bloodshot eyes and unsteady on his feet.” Katya Kushner, another passenger on the flight, tells the Moscow Times: “I don’t think there’s anyone in Russia who doesn’t know what a drunk person looks like. At first, he 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.’ “

That was not necessary, however, as “the airline finally relented and summoned new pilots to fly the jet to New York three hours late,” the London Times writes. As for Aeroflot, the company claims post-flight tests revealed no traces of alcohol in the pilot’s blood. The carrier initially blamed “mass psychosis” among the passengers. However, the pilot is now said to be under treatment at a Russian hospital, with the London Times writing Aeroflot “later issued a statement saying that Mr. Cheplevsky could have suffered a stroke just before the flight.” An airline spokesman tells the Guardian: “As soon as he is fit he will be interviewed as part of our internal investigation.”