Sri Lankan Airways plane delayed 15 hours because of drunk pilot

Sri Lankan Airways plane delayed 15 hours because of drunk pilot

The plane that was scheduled to set off from Frankfurt Airport, Germany last Friday (19) at 3.20 p.m. carrying 259 passengers had been delayed for 15 hours. The reason for the delay was that the chief pilot who was responsible to pilot the airplane had

collapsed, being overdrunk.

The Chief Pilot Captain Upendra Ranawera had failed the breathalyser test and his services has thus been suspended.  Finally this A 330 type UL 554 airbus had been piloted to its destination by another pilot  who who flew to Germany. Since according to international rules this pilot was permitted to fly a second plane after a period of rest of 10 hours, the airbus which was subjected to this mishap was handed over to his custody only after a delay of 15 hours. Because of this delay all passengers of the said airline had to be paid a compensation and in addition because of the delay incurred in detaining the airplane at the airport, the Sri Lankan Airlines has had to pay another fee. According to the European Commission regulations. any airline which is responsible for a period of over 3 hours of delay of passengers of such an airline has to be compensated by the airline. As such, each such passenger in this case is to be paid a compensation of 600 Euros which in terms of Sri Lankan currency amounts to a figure of Rs. 96,960. Therefore in this instance of 259 passengers, the total amounts to over Rs. 2 crores.

This incident in fact has been reported across newspapers all over Europe and as a result a distorted image has been portrayed about Sri Lankan Airlines ending up with damage done to the Tourist Industry as well. Because of the incident of the Captain who collapsed, subsequent to the paradox created in this respect he has not come in the flight which was to arrive in the night and information has been received that he is expected to come to Sri Lanka at a later time.