An All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight attendant was caught over the alcohol limit as they boarded their aircraft, causing the airline to delay four flights in sequence as they scrambled to find a replacement.

What are the details?

Last Saturday, ANA reported to Japan Today that a 20 something-year-old flight attendant had a little bit too much to drink the night before. The cabin crew member was boarding her first flight of the day at 6:30 AM at Fukuoka Airport when she was asked to do a mandatory alcohol test.

The machine analyzed her breath and found that she had 0.14 milligrams of alcohol in her system. ANA has a policy that cabin crew, pilots and other staff members must have 0.00 milligrams of alcohol when checked. They also have updated their rules, pushing the previous requirement of 12 hours between drinking and work to 24 hours (of which the flight attendant was easily in violation).

As her first flight (NH2124) was at 7:20 AM, the airline was forced to find someone else to fill in her role from another flight to Tokyo. That move had a knock-on effect and delayed the following flight, which then delayed a fourth flight in sequence. The longest delay was around 25 minutes.

The flight attendant was mortified by her mistake and "regretted being careless for violating the airline’s regulations."

She had apparently been drinking a local beverage called Shochu (a type of distilled liquor) the night before with a friend and had not realized how much she had.

How much did she actually drink?

To put the numbers in perspective, a 70 kg woman who has one standard drink would have a mandatory alcohol test result of 0.006. In order to have been at 0.14 milligrams of alcohol at the time of the test, the flight attendant must have drunk the equivalent of 7-10 standard drinks approx 5-6 hours before. That is the same as six or so glasses of wine.

I'm going to assume that she was a little bit lighter weight (perhaps closer to 60kg) which would have made it fewer drinks to achieve the same level of intoxication.

You might be reading this and thinking, I've worked hungover before, it can't be such a big deal, can it?

Unfortunately, whilst we can be lenient with someone being a bit hungover in other roles such as behind a counter at 7/11, a flight attendant's most important job onboard is the safety of the passengers.

You might see them serving a drink or pushing a duty free cart, but their real job and extensive training background are to save your life in an emergency.

We are glad to know that at the conclusion of the story, ANA put safety above all else and delayed flights to ensure that the correct procedure was followed (such as in this case, or this case or this case).

Simple Flying reached out to ANA for more details, but at the time of publishing had yet to receive a reply.

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