British Airways flight grounded in Helsinki

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3729918.stm

"Two air stewardesses were prevented from boarding a British Airways
flight from Helsinki to London, after allegedly failing a breath test."

Hmm.. They spelled it "Finn Air" in that article.

According to a Finnish newspaper the suspicion, and resulting
breathalyzer test happened before the flight boarded. It says
that the ground staff of the aiport were the ones who
blew the whistle on the two stewardesses, age approximately 40 and 50.

The testing was done by the airport police.

Here are more links to the story:
http://news.google.com/news?ncl=http...ticle6059.html

--
Mikko Peltoniemi
Film & Video Editor, Avid Technician at large.
http://editor.is.dreaming.org

Hats off to the alert people of the Ilmailulaitos (Finnish CAA)...
A couple of years ago they grounded a Lufthansa flight because both
pilots failed a pre-flight breathalyser test.

Birgit Kleymann wrote:

Hats off to the alert people of the Ilmailulaitos (Finnish CAA)...
A couple of years ago they grounded a Lufthansa flight because both
pilots failed a pre-flight breathalyser test.

Actually, Ilmailulaitos might not have had anything to do with it.

Here is what the _Helsingin Sanomat_ (the most important 'serious'
newspaper in Finland) reported:

'Police were contacted by a representative of the company that takes
care of British Airways ground services at the airport'.

How did the ground services company know something was wrong? _HS_
continues:

'The representative had been contacted by the hotel where the women had
spent the night. The ground services personnel had been tipped off that
they should check to see if the two women were in any condition to fly'.

http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/engli.../1076154202532

cheers,

Henry

Birgit Kleymann wrote:

Hats off to the alert people of the Ilmailulaitos (Finnish CAA)...
A couple of years ago they grounded a Lufthansa flight because both
pilots failed a pre-flight breathalyser test.

Actually, Ilmailulaitos might not have had anything to do with it.

Here is what the _Helsingin Sanomat_ (the most important 'serious'
newspaper in Finland) reported:

'Police were contacted by a representative of the company that takes
care of British Airways ground services at the airport'.

How did the ground services company know something was wrong? _HS_
continues:

'The representative had been contacted by the hotel where the women had
spent the night. The ground services personnel had been tipped off that
they should check to see if the two women were in any condition to fly'.

http://www.helsinginsanomat.fi/engli.../1076154202532

cheers,

Henry

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 21:08:55 -0400, Mikko Peltoniemi
wrote:

Birgit Kleymann wrote:

Hats off to the alert people of the Ilmailulaitos (Finnish CAA)...
A couple of years ago they grounded a Lufthansa flight because both
pilots failed a pre-flight breathalyser test.

Today's paper still has some small additional details, that two of
the cabin crew registered over 0.5% on the breathalyzer. And the
captain decided not to fly, until they got two more cabin crew from
London to fill in.

They should hardly have been able to stand up at 0.5%; that's
over six times the legal limit for driving in the USA at 0.08%.

Are you sure they didn't register 0.05%?


************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 21:08:55 -0400, Mikko Peltoniemi
wrote:

Birgit Kleymann wrote:

Hats off to the alert people of the Ilmailulaitos (Finnish CAA)...
A couple of years ago they grounded a Lufthansa flight because both
pilots failed a pre-flight breathalyser test.

Today's paper still has some small additional details, that two of
the cabin crew registered over 0.5% on the breathalyzer. And the
captain decided not to fly, until they got two more cabin crew from
London to fill in.

They should hardly have been able to stand up at 0.5%; that's
over six times the legal limit for driving in the USA at 0.08%.

Are you sure they didn't register 0.05%?


************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Hatunen wrote:

Are you sure they didn't register 0.05%?

Yeah, I think you're right.

--
Mikko Peltoniemi
Film & Video Editor, Avid Technician at large.
http://editor.is.dreaming.org

Hatunen wrote:

Are you sure they didn't register 0.05%?

Yeah, I think you're right.

--
Mikko Peltoniemi
Film & Video Editor, Avid Technician at large.
http://editor.is.dreaming.org

Hatunen wrote:

snip

There's an awful lot of confusion among an awful lot of people about the
terminology involved here and the way the results are expressed, so
let's take a careful look.

If we write 5%, we say five percent, meaning five parts out of one
hundred. Likewise, 1% is one percent or one part out of a hundred.

Since 0.5 is one-half, then 0.5% is one-half of one percent, meaning
five parts out of one thousand.

Now, for the purpose of an example, let's assume an adult human being
whose body contains five litres of blood. (This is in fact well within
the norm.)

Let's have this person drink some beer containing 5% alcohol. (This is a
bit on the strong side, perhaps, but not at all unusual.)

In the US, a 12-oz. bottle of beer contains 355 ml. In Europe, the
standard bottle is a little smaller, at 330 ml. Let's take the European
size, and say that a six-pack contains 1980 ml. Then, let's round that
off to 2000 ml., or two litres.

So we've got two litres of beer containing 5% alcohol, which means that
we have a total of 100 ml of 'pure' alcohol.

If our drinker were to pound down an entire six-pack of this strong(ish)
beer in a very short time, he would no doubt be drunk. How drunk? For
the sake of the example, let's assume that (a) all of the alcohol in the
beer is absorbed into the blood immediately and (b) none of it is
metabolised. That means he's got 100 ml of alcohol dispersed in 5000 ml
of blood. That means 1 part in 50, or 2%. Two percent. Written as a
decimal, that is 0.02 blood alcohol--it is NOT 0.02%.

You say

They should hardly have been able to stand up at 0.5%; that's
over six times the legal limit for driving in the USA at 0.08%.

In fact, 0.5% is equal to 25 ml of alcohol in our subject's five litres
of blood. He would get that from one and a half beers--obviously nowhere
near enough to make him 'hardly able to stand up'.

If the legal limit for driving in the USA is 0.08% (4 ml in five
litres), then a drinker would get that much in about three sips of 5%
beer!

One suspects that the American limit is actually 0.8% -- "eight-tenths
of one percent" -- or (for our five litre subject) the amount of alcohol
in approximately two and a half bottles of strong beer. This is an
amount which, if ingested quickly, would in all likelihood cause an
impairment. In Europe, the standard is lower, usually 0.5% -- which is
why the 'designated driver' will have no more than one or two drinks at
the beginning of the evening. Of course, in the real world there are
variables, chief among them being body size/blood volume and time
(ingesting/absorbing/metabolising). Nevertheless, even after his two
drink limit the driver is far from being 'hardly able to stand up';
rather, he can be perfectly confident about blowing into the
breathalyser at any time.

cheers,

Henry

Henry wrote:

There's an awful lot of confusion among an awful lot of people about the
terminology involved here and the way the results are expressed, so
let's take a careful look.

snip

Now, for the purpose of an example, let's assume an adult human being
whose body contains five litres of blood. (This is in fact well within
the norm.)

Let's have this person drink some beer containing 5% alcohol. (This is a
bit on the strong side, perhaps, but not at all unusual.)

snip

One suspects that the American limit is actually 0.8% -- "eight-tenths
of one percent" -- or (for our five litre subject) the amount of alcohol
in approximately two and a half bottles of strong beer.

If I read you correctly, your reasoning is based on the assumption that
consuming a bottle of beer makes all of the ethanol go directly into the
blood system, which (fortunately) is not the case. As a matter of fact,
0.5% of alcohol in the blood is enough to kill most humans. A quick
google search turned up this page --
http://members.aol.com/intoxikon/alcohol.poisoning.html. I'm sure you
can find more on the subject.

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