"Lord Truscott of Brownenvelope" a écrit dans le
message de
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This is your pilot slurring: Garbled message from cockpit sparks
passenger rebellion

By Shaun Walker in Moscow

Wednesday, 4 February 2009


Passengers aboard an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to New York were
greeted by a welcome announcement from the pilot, Alexander
Cheplevsky, that was so garbled it was impossible to tell what
language he was speaking

Alamy

Passengers aboard an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to New York were
greeted by a welcome announcement from the pilot, Alexander
Cheplevsky, that was so garbled it was impossible to tell what
language he was speaking

* © Photos More pictures

Spending 10 hours aboard a plane is never a particularly fun prospect,
but it becomes downright terrifying when the pilot appears to be so
drunk that he can't speak properly.

It has emerged that passengers aboard an Aeroflot flight from Moscow
to New York were greeted by a welcome announcement from the pilot,
Alexander Cheplevsky, that was so garbled it was impossible to tell
what language he was speaking. They became so scared that a group of
passengers demanded to see the man at the controls to check whether or
not he was drunk.

Mr Cheplevsky refused to leave the cockpit to reassure the passengers,
who were told by the crew they should either stop complaining or get
off the plane. The Moscow Times, which had a reporter on board the
plane, claimed that an Aeroflot representative boarded the aircraft
and told the passengers it wasn't a big deal if the pilot was drunk.
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"Really, all he has to do is press a button and the plane flies
itself," the representative allegedly said. "The worst that could
happen is he'll trip over something in the cockpit."

Unsurprisingly, this did not reassure the passengers, but the crew
simply told them to "stop making trouble". The incident, on 28
December, was only resolved with the help of Ksenia Sobchak, a
television presenter, who happened to be on the plane. She made a few
phone calls and after a delay of several hours, the pilots were
replaced and flight 315 took off.

The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Mr Cheplevsky had
been celebrating his birthday the night before, but the airline denied
he was drunk. A spokeswoman for Aeroflot, Irina Dannenberg, accused
the passengers of "mass psychosis" and said the airline would sue Ms
Sobchak. The airline later issued a statement claiming the pilot may
have suffered a stroke before take-off.

"I don't think there's anyone in Russia who doesn't know what a drunk
person looks like," a passenger, Katya Kushner, told The Moscow Times.
"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'."

Russians have something of a reputation for drunkenness in the air.
Stewardesses on many Russian airlines turn a blind eye to the
consumption of duty-free alcohol on board. In one incident in
mid-2007, a flight travelling to Turkey from St Petersburg had to turn
back after a drunken brawl broke out. Last autumn, special forces were
put on high alert in St Petersburg after a Russian man on a Turkish
Airlines flight to the city said he was hijacking the plane. When the
aircraft landed, it transpired it was simply a drunken prank.

But an allegation of an intoxicated pilot is a worrying new
development for an airline that has hired Western PR firms to help
shed its Soviet-era image of rusting old planes, harridan-like
stewardesses and poor safety.

The airline is already reeling from a crash last September of an
internal flight run by its subsidiary airline, Aeroflot-Nord. All 88
people on board were killed when the plane burst into flames while
making a second attempt to land in bad weather conditions. A report
released this week said alcohol was found in the muscle tissue of the
pilot Rodion Medvedev. Recordings reveal that Mr Medvedev, who was due
to land the plane, handed over the controls to his co-pilot, saying:
"You see yourself that I can't."

Winging it: Drunk pilots

* In December 2003, Virgin Atlantic pilot Richard Harwell tried to fly
between Washington DC and London while drunk. The 55-year-old American
was arrested shortly before he was due to leave Dulles airport after a
security officer smelled alcohol on his breath. He was sentenced to 60
days in prison.

* In December 2004 Finnish pilot Heikki Tallila, 51, was jailed for
six months after falling failing a breath test. The day before he was
due to fly his Finnair jet out of Manchester with 225 passengers on
board, Tallila drank six glasses of wine and a beer.