Passenger jet pilot who was four times the drink-fly limit on flight for Mauritius is jailed for eight months

A BRITISH Airways pilot who turned up to to fly a passenger jet four times oer the drink-fly limit after downing wine plus double vodkas and coke has been jailed for eight months.

Disgraced Captain Julian Monaghan had been due to be one of three pilots on a Boeing 777 flight from Gatwick Airport to Mauritius when a fellow crew member smelt booze on his breath.

Shamed father-of-two Monaghan, 49, was due to fly as many as 300 people 12 hours from West Sussex to the East African holiday island when he downed vodka on the morning before the scheduled night flight to “help him sleep”.

But flight technician Verity Mcallen became concerned when she smelt alcohol on his breath and reported it to her boss, who called police as the jet was about to “push away” for take off at 8.20pm on January 18.

Monaghan was arrested by armed police and found to have 86mg of alcohol per 100mg of blood – four times the legal limit of 20mg allowed for air crew and just over the legal drink-drive limit of 80mg.

He told police he had flown from Cape Town to Heathrow in order to fly from Gatwick and drank a glass of wine on the plane, followed by three vodka miniatures and Pepsi by 11.15 am.

Pilots are not allowed to drink eight hours before a flight.

As a crucial “third pilot” of the jet, the flight was delayed for nearly three hours while a replacement was found for Monaghan.

He no longer works as a pilot following his resignation as soon as his blood reading was confirmed and had “thrown away his career”, it was said.

At Lewes Crown Court, jailing Monaghan, Judge Janet Waddicor said: “People who live and work on the ground of flight path of the aircraft are entitled to feel safe and that the person flying the aircraft is complying with the deliberately stringent regulations that forbids consumption of alcohol above a certain limit”.