Jail term for drunk pilot should send strong message: Crown
CALGARY The eight-month sentence handed an impaired airline pilot Monday will send a strong message to others, a prosecutor said.
“It gives a message to the pilots across Canada and, as she said, across the world that if you fly impaired then you’re going to meet a jail sentence,” Crown lawyer Rose Greenwood said, of Judge Anne Brown’s ruling. “I think eight months is a pretty clear message.”
With a dearth of Canadian cases to consider, Brown looked at cases out of the U.S., U.K, and Australia for guidance in coming to a fit sentence for Miroslav Gronych.
The Calgary provincial court judge found that a proper range for cases where a commercial pilot is impaired, but stopped before taking control of a plane, is six- to 12-months jail.
Brown said there were mitigating factors which brought Gronych down from the high end of that range, including his remorsefulness and the fact he has sought help for his alcohol addiction, before and after the offence.
Another factor, she said, was “due to the high level of public scrutiny.” Gronych has suffered a lot of shame both in Canada and his homeland of Slovakia.
Gronych, 37, pleaded guilty last month to having care and control of a Sunwing Airlines aircraft while he had more than the legal amount of alcohol in his system in connection with an incident Dec. 31.
Greenwood told court at that time a breath sample provided by Gronych hours after he was supposed to pilot the flight leaving Calgary showed a blood-alcohol level at nearly three-and-a-half times the legal driving limit.
She said a maid who cleaned Gronych’s room at the Delta Airport Hotel found an empty 26-ounce vodka bottle.
She said he arrived in Calgary shortly before 1 a.m. and was to return to the airport at 6 a.m. for a flight departing an hour later.
When Gronych failed to show, the first officer contacted Sunwing’s operation control centre, which got in touch with the pilot.
Gronych arrived at the departure gate at 7:05 a.m., five minutes after the flight was to have departed.
In ordering Gronych, who was in Canada on a work visa and will be returned to his native Slovakia when he completes his sentence, to serve a one-year flying prohibition, Brown said publicity about the case weighed in his favour.