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.
