American pilot who drank whiskey ‘in his sleep’ is cleared

An American Airlines pilot arrested at an airport security check-in after apparently arriving for duty drunk was found not guilty by a court yesterday after telling a jury that he must have consumed a third of a bottle of Irish whiskey in his sleep.

James Yates, 46, was found to be almost eight times over the legal limit to fly an aircraft shortly before he was scheduled to take the controls of a Boeing 767 carrying 181 passengers from Manchester Airport to Chicago in February last year.

The prosecution said that Mr Yates, an experienced pilot with the airline, had gone on a seven-hour drinking spree with his two co-pilots on the night before the long-haul flight.

In evidence, Mr Yates, a former National Guardsman who at one time was involved in policing the Iraqi nofly zone, said that he had woken up late on the morning of the flight. He claimed a sleeping disorder may have led to him drinking from a bottle of Bush-mills the night before.

He insisted that he had not intended to carry out his duties as the flight’s first officer that morning, but was turning up at the airport simply to inform his captain that he was unfit to fly.

At the end of a three-day trial, the jury at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, took only 90 minutes to clear Mr Yates of a single charge of carrying out an activity ancillary to an aviation function while over the drink limit. He slapped colleagues on the back and grinned with delight when the verdict was announced.