A flight attendant who tried to go to work drunk on board a plane at the United Kingdom’s Heathrow Airport has been fined by a British court after admitting to the offence.
Jessica Kostakopoulou, a 43-year-old woman from Windsor, had worked in the aviation sector for two decades and was a Scandinavian Airlines employee at the time of the incident on 22 March 2025. As she tried to pass through security at Terminal 2 and reach the flight she was due to work on, staff noticed she smelled of alcohol. They also found her to be “unsteady on her feet” and reported her speech was slurred.
When confronted, Kostakopoulou at first denied having had anything to drink, and police were called. Breathalyser tests then revealed she had 254 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood in her system – over 230 milligrams above the legal limit, which is set at 20 milligrams, the prosecution told the court.
Although she pleaded guilty, arguments put forward in Kostakopoulou’s defence included her long, previously unblemished record, and the fact that she would not have been in a supervisory role on the flight in question. “No direct harm” came about due to her behaviour on that day, the defence team pointed out.
What’s more, Kostakopoulou resigned from her role as a flight steward immediately after the arrest. She told the court she felt “very ashamed and embarrassed about everything that happened,” explaining: “I’m trying to amend my ways now and start a new job. I’m very sorry.”
Nonetheless, her drunken attempt to go through security meant the magistrates’ court found Kostakopoulou guilty of carrying out “an activity ancillary to aviation” while impaired by alcohol. Despite finding her remorse to be “genuine”, the court imposed a penalty of £623 (around €720). The fine included a victim surcharge and legal costs. An arrangement has been made for the sum to be paid in monthly instalments.
Kostakopoulou’s drunkenness is not the first time an airline employee has been arrested for being under the influence at work. In June 2025, a 41-year-old British Airways crew member was arrested on suspicion of being unfit for duty after being found dancing in the nude on a flight from San Francisco and London. And a Delta Air Lines pilot failed a breathalyser test in Stockholm in July 2025, resulting in the cancellation of a transatlantic flight to New York City.
The European Union’s Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) first proposed random alcohol tests for pilots and cabin attendants on flights out of the European Union in 2016, following the Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 disaster in which co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed an Airbus A320 into the Alps, killing all 150 people on board instantly. The amendment to Regulation (EU) 965/2012 was only brought into force in 2021 after delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration’s “bottle-to-throttle” rules prohibit pilots from flying within eight hours of consuming alcohol, or with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.04% or more. Some carriers impose a stricter 12-hour abstinence period.
