Two Delta attendants booted from flight after failing Breathalyzer tests

Two Delta Air Lines flight attendants were prohibited from working and issued fines after failing pre-flight Breathalyzer tests in Amsterdam last week. One of them reportedly blew seven times over the legal limit for alcohol.

According to industry publication One Mile At a Time, the incident happened Friday morning when Dutch police conducted routine Breathalyzer tests on 445 airline employees at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Three of them were cited as over the Netherlands’ legal limit of 0.02 for flight crew members on the job.

Two were the Delta flight attendants, both of whom were slated to work on a flight to New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport. One was found to have a blood alcohol content of just above the limit at 0.024, and was fined 275 euros. 

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The second blew 0.143 – which is seven times the legal limit for flight crews and nearly double the blood alcohol content allowed for driving in the U.S. – and was fined the maximum penalty of 1,900 euros by the authorities.

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“Delta’s alcohol policy is among the strictest in the industry and we have zero tolerance for violation,” a Delta spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement, confirming, “The employees were removed from their scheduled duties and the flight departed as scheduled.”

The third flight crew member that failed Friday morning’s testing in Amsterdam was from a different airline. That individual blew a 0.13, more than six times the legal limit, and was fined 1,800 euros.

Dutch aviation regulations prohibit flight crew members from consuming any alcohol within 10 hours prior to flying, which is more stringent than many other countries, which forbid airline crews from drinking alcohol within eight hours ahead of a flight.