Air hostess loses job; fined £400 for being 6 times over alcohol limit
25.08.08
An air stewardess had been out drinking with the captain of the plane she was working on hours before she was found too drunk to fly, a court has heard.
Monika Lukomska, 24, of Liss, Hampshire, was caught over the limit after a night out with her bmi colleagues in Aberdeen. The Polish stewardess had been due to work on the Faro-bound flight from Aberdeen Airport on August 3 but was arrested when airport staff suspected she had been drinking.
Ms Lukomska was arrested and taken off the plane because she was over the nine microgram alcohol limit for flying. Appearing in court, she admitted carrying out her duties with 57 micrograms of alcohol in 100ml of blood – more than six times the legal limit for her job and almost three times the limit for driving a car.
She was fined £400 when she appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court after admitting that she had shared two bottles of wine and drank cocktails with the first officer and captain of the plane the night before she was due to fly.
Sheriff Kieran McLernan told her: ‘You may not have realised it but you were more than one-and-a-half times over the limit for driving. Being part of a crew on an aircraft, this is more stringently controlled.'
‘To have been yourself in that condition and not realised it is a very serious matter because there is an obligation on you to be particularly careful when you know people are dependent on you.’
Ms Lukomska has also lost her job as a result of the incident. A bmi spokeswoman said: ‘We take passenger and crew safety very seriously. We operate a zero-tolerance policy in terms of alcohol consumption. The pilot and co-pilot were both breathalysed and provided negative specimens.'
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