Two Delta Air Lines flight attendants who were meant to be working on the same long-haul international flight from Amsterdam to New York JFK failed breathalyzer tests just minutes before they were due to board the plane to look after hundreds of passengers.
The flight attendants, one male and one female, had been enjoying a layover in Amsterdam on Thanksgiving and were due to fly back to New York on Friday morning but instead ended up being arrested and suspended from duty.
In a statement, the Dutch police service said the female flight attendant had been ordered to pay a fine of €1,900 (US $2,000) after she was found to be seven times over the legal alcohol limit for aircrew.
The male crew member was fined just €275 after he failed the breathalyzer test by just 0.02. Both flight attendants have, however, been suspended from their jobs and face being terminated by Delta Air Lines.
Aviation insider JonNYC on X and Blue Sky identified the flight attendants as Delta employees.
And on the 29th, 2 FAs were pulled off duty from DL49 to JFK
— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) 29 November 2024 at 22:20
Surprisingly, despite the fact that two flight attendants on the same flight were removed from duty at the last minute, Delta flight DL49 departed Amsterdam Schiphol on Friday with a delay of just 20 minutes and actually ended up arriving in New York ahead of schedule.
The arrests were part of a major joint exercise by local and national police at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, which resulted in 445 pilots and flight attendants being breathalyzed in the space of just three hours on Friday morning.
The female Delta flight attendant was found to have a blood alcohol level of 1.43 grams per liter of blood. The maximum blood alcohol concentration set by European aviation regulators, however, is just 0.2 grams per liter.
The male flight attendant had a recorded blood alcohol concentration of 0.24.
European member states are also allowed to set additional alcohol limits on aircrew and in the case of the Netherlands, pilots and flight attendants are banned from consuming alcohol within 10 hours of a flight.
The European Air Safety Agency (EASA) warns, though, that simply abstaining from alcohol for a set number of hours – the so-called ‘bottle to throttle’ rule does not guarantee that an individual’s blood alcohol concentration will be within legal limits.
European countries have been required to conduct random alcohol breath tests of aircrew since February 2021. Foreign aircrews have been subject to these breath tests as part of the bloc’s Safety Assessment of Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) inspection program.
In March, a veteran Delta Air Lines aviator was jailed for 10 months in the United Kingdom after he pleaded guilty to reporting for duty as a pilot while being impaired through alcohol.
Captain Lawrence Russell, 63, was sentenced in Edinburgh following his arrest in June 2023, when he was found to have 49 milligrams of alcohol in 100 milliliters of blood. The alcohol limit in the United Kingdom is just 20 milligrams.
Police had been called to conduct a breathalyzer test on Russell after security officers became suspicious when they found a half-drunk bottle of Jägermeister in his carry-on.
Prosecutors had accused Russell of showing a “reckless disregard for the safety of his passengers and crew.”
British authorities have, however, been more lenient with flight attendants, such as a crew member for American Airlines who avoided a prison sentence after she was found to be four times over the legal alcohol limit when minutes before she was due to operate a flight from Heathrow Airport in 2019.
As well as the two Delta flight attendants, a third crew member for an unnamed airline was also found to be over the alcohol limit during Friday morning’s spot-check operation at Amsterdam Schiphol.
The female flight attendant had a blood alcohol level of 1.30 grams per liter of blood and was fined €1,800.
I read somewhere that the AMS incident was “a good reason for flight attendants to have a union” at Delta. I disagree. The pilots, flight attendants and other crew members KNOW the regulations regarding arriving for work and being “over the limit” regardless of which country they are in. The company is quite clear. Termination for cause is the only option and it should serve as a warning to others. This incident will remain on their employment record forever. Watch them try to get another job with any airline or related industry. Pilots, by the way, are required to disclose legal infractions on the application to renew the medical.
These incidents are why there are alcohol rehabilitation programs for both pilots and flight attendants. Yes, they CAN get their jobs back and after working that hard to complete rehab, they have earned it.