Delta pilot pulled from cockpit at MSP for suspected drinking before flight to San Diego
Police at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport took a Delta Air Lines pilot out of the cockpit of a plane bound for San Diego on Tuesday morning for suspicion of drinking before he took the controls.
Airport spokesperson Pat Hogan identified the pilot as a 37-year-old Rosemount, Minn., man, and said he was booked for suspected violation of a prohibition on flying while impaired, after being taken to a nearby hospital for a blood test.
Hogan said investigators are still awaiting the results of toxicology analysis to determine the pilot’s blood alcohol level, so formal criminal charges can be filed. MPR News generally does not name suspects before they’re charged in court.
Hogan said the incident started about 7 a.m. when the pilot was in a security line for flight crews. “They were conducting some additional screening, and he saw that and got out of the line. And when we investigated further, we found that he was in possession of an alcohol bottle,” Hogan said.
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Police didn’t initially catch the pilot at the gate, and Hogan said it took a few minutes from the initial response to the Transportation Security Administration to figure out where the pilot had gone, and that he’d initially gotten rid rid of the bottle.
They eventually tracked him through the airport to the gate where Delta flight 1728 was about to depart.
“By the time we got to him, he was in the cockpit, but the plane hadn’t actually moved from the gate yet,” Hogan said.
The pilot was booked and released at the airport.
Federal regulation bars pilots from taking control of an airplane with an alcohol level greater than .04 percent, and prohibits pilots from drinking at all eight hours before a flight.
Current federal rules have been in place partly as the result of a notorious Northwest Airlines incident in 1990, when a flight crew flew from Fargo to Minneapolis after a night of heavy drinking.
The case resulted in the first ever federal conviction for drunken flying. Even hours after they landed, two of the three flight crew tested for blood alcohol levels of at least .08 percent — the current threshold for drunk driving on Minnesota roads.