A friend told us about this amusing/frightening story broadcast yesterday on Canada’s CBC radio show “As It Happens,” relating an incident of a clearly intoxicated Russian pilot being confronted by passengers on a transatlantic Aeroflot flight meant to leave from Moscow (there’s also a piece over at MT).  The illuminating part of the story?  How the passengers are scolded by the airline for making such a big deal out of the situation.  Mark this one down for low moments in Russian customer service…

From the CBC:

Dateline – Moscow….

Clause number one of any Airline Passengers bill of rights, you might think, would be .. … nyet to drunk pilots.

But it appears no such clause exists in Moscow.

According to details revealed this week, passengers on board a recent New York-bound Aeroflot flight were somewhat startled by the intercom greeting from Captain Alexander Cheplevsky.

His “Welcome aboard,” spoken in Russian, was barely intelligible. When he switched to English, the slurring was worse. In fact, passengers told The Moscow Times they couldn’t tell, really, what language their pilot was speaking. If any.