A Delta Air Lines transatlantic flight from Sweden was canceled after one of the pilots failed a breathalyzer test. Should she be forced to pay for all the compensation Delta now incurs from her own pocket?

Delta Pilot Fails Breathalyzer In Stockholm—Should She Personally Pay Passenger Compensation?

First, let’s examine the particulars of the incident that occurred this week, and then I will speak more generally about pilots and drinking.

This incident occurred on Delta flight 205 from Stockholm Arlanda (ARN) to New York (JFK) on Tuesday, July 22, 2025. About an hour before scheduled departure time, Swedish authorities boarded the aircraft to perform a random breathalyzer test on the crew. One of the pilots failed, and police immediately arrested her, forcing Delta to cancel the flight.

A police operation took place at Arlanda Airport on Tuesday morning. At 09.15, a pilot was arrested by the police during a check on board an aircraft…

According to the police, the plane was about to take off from Arlanda when the arrest took place…

The police do not want to go into the gender, nationality or age of the arrested pilot [but] it is a female pilot from the United States.

Delta’s operations are limited in Stockholm, but it is a hub for its SkyTeam and future joint venture partner SAS. To the extent possible, passengers were rerouted to their final destinations.

Should Pilots Personally Pay For These Delays?

Is it fair to say that we must know our own bodies?

Per Harvard Health, women generally experience higher and more prolonged effects of alcohol compared to men due to biological differences, including less body water, higher body fat percentage, and lower levels of enzymes that metabolize alcohol.

I strongly doubt that this pilot was “drunk” or “intoxicated.” I don’t think she was a threat to anyone onboard.

But she ran afoul of the law, which is clear and is meant to protect the public by discouraging pilots from even approaching a state of intoxication.

Is it too much to ask that pilots refrain from drinking the night before they fly, even if many (if not most) can “handle it” just fine and show no discernible effects the following morning?

I feel bad for the pilot…maybe she just had one beer with her fellow crewmembers and then went to bed. She probably never thought that a glass of wine or beer would linger for so long. But I do feel worse for the passengers who were stranded in Stockholm.

Each passenger is due at least €600 in delay compensation under EU261 if they arrived at their final destination more than six hours late.

Should Delta pass that bill onto the pilot who had too much to drink, even if it was only one drink?

Would that be an effective deterrent to discourage pilots from drinking?

Or is there something else going on, like a strong mouthwash perhaps with alcohol content that may have registered in this test?

CONCLUSION

With a blood alcohol content limit of only 0.02 in Sweden (and many other jurisdictions), I suspect a lot of pilots would get arrested if every pilot had to undergo a check before every flight. Unlike the Delta pilot out of Scotland last year, it does not seem that this was a dangerous situation. Even so, these guardrails are to prevent pilots from testing the limits and I wonder if forcing pilots to pay up for errors in judgment would be an even more effective way to ensure such errors do not happen in the first place.

> Read More: Delta Air Lines Pilot Jailed In Scotland

Image: Delta // Hat Tip: View From The Wing