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The Heathrow Airport pilot who may have been drinking "was turned in by a fellow crew member," ABC's David Muir told us. He hardly needed to down anything to get into trouble: in Britain pilots are flying over the limit with a 0.02 blood/alcohol level, "about a half glass of beer." FAA rules are nicknamed "bottle to throttle," NBC's Tom Costello told us, for the dry eight hours required before climbing into the cockpit. Both Muir and Costello offered free publicity to Flying Drunk, the memoir by Joseph Balzer. He was imprisoned for drinking behind the joystick in 1990. Balzer is now sober and has regained his pilot's license.
CBS' Nancy Cordes tried to make a general story out of the rare event. She yoked this rare United Airlines breathalyzer with the Northwest Airlines pilots who flew beyond Minneapolis last month and a Delta Airlines jetliner that landed on a taxiway instead of a runway to create "a series of embarrassing incidents" for the piloting profession. She cited as a possible cause the strain and stress from a series of slashing cuts to salary and benefits over the past eight years.
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