Passengers aboard an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to New York were greeted by a welcome announcement from the pilot, Alexander Cheplevsky, that was so garbled it was impossible to tell what language he was speaking
The passengers became so scared that a group demanded to see the man at the controls to check whether or not he was drunk.
The Moscow Times, which had a reporter on board the plane, claimed that an Aeroflot representative boarded the aircraft and told the passengers it wasn't a big deal if the pilot was drunk.
"Really, all he has to do is press a button and the plane flies itself," the representative allegedly said. "The worst that could happen is he'll trip over something in the cockpit."
The incident was only resolved with the help of Ksenia Sobchak, a television presenter, who happened to be on the plane. She made a few phone calls and after a delay of several hours, the pilots were replaced and Flight 315 took off.
The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that Cheplevsky had been celebrating his birthday the night before, but the airline denied he was drunk.
A spokeswoman for Aeroflot accused the passengers of "mass psychosis" and said the airline would sue Sobchak. The airline later issued a statement claiming the pilot may have suffered a stroke before take-off.
The airline is already reeling from a crash last September of an internal flight run by its subsidiary airline, Aeroflot-Nord.
All 88 people on board were killed when the plane burst into flames while making a second attempt to land in bad weather conditions.
A report released this week said alcohol was found in the muscle tissue of the pilot Rodion Medvedev.
Recordings reveal that Medvedev, who was due to land the plane, handed over the controls to his co-pilot, saying, "You see yourself that I can't."
Plonked pilots
In December 2003, Virgin Atlantic pilot Richard Harwell, 55, tried to fly between Washington DC and London while drunk. The American was arrested shortly before he was due to leave Dulles airport after a security officer smelled alcohol on his breath. He was sentenced to 60 days in prison.
In December 2004 Finnish pilot Heikki Tallila, 51, was jailed for six months after failing a breathalyser test. The day before he was due to fly his Finnair jet out of Manchester with 225 passengers on board, Tallila drank six glasses of wine and a beer. - The Independent