Story Archive

Flying High

Passengers were loading onto a Delta Airlines commuter jet in Grand Forks, N.D., for a flight to Minneapolis, Minn., when one — a nurse — reported to the pilot that the flight attendant seemed drunk. The pilot called for police, who say that the unnamed 51-year-old flight attendant said she had not been drinking — but was swaying as they talked, couldn’t say the alphabet, and couldn’t spell her own name. Three empty vodka bottles were found in the plane’s galley trash, and officers took her for a breath test, which indicated her blood alcohol level was 0.186 percent. The flight was canceled. She was not arrested, but was “relieved of duty without pay pending further investigation,” said a spokesman for Pinnacle Airlines, which operates that flight. (RC/Duluth News-Tribune) ...Too bad she didn’t work for US Air: she’d have been immediately promoted to pilot.