Only advantage of an alcohol-free airport is you know pilot will be sober - Vladimir McTavish

Captain Lawrence Russell, 63, was caught with two bottles of Jagermeister in his hand luggage as he was going through security. One of the bottles was half-empty. It could reasonably be inferred they were in his carry-on bag because he was planning to drink them during the flight.

One and a half bottles of Jagermeister is quite a lot of booze to put away, even over the course of a seven-hour journey. I don’t think I’d be able to do my job properly with that amount of liquor in my system. And all I do is stand on a stage telling jokes. If it all goes pear-shaped because I’m hammered, I’m the only one who dies.

Anyone who has been through airport security will know that liquids must be a maximum of 100 millilitres and must be carried in a sealed transparent bag.

Who would think they could smuggle a bottle-and-a-half of spirits through security? The guy must have been utterly plastered to think he’d get away with it.

Thankfully, I only read this story once I had arrived home following a 24-hour journey back from Australia. Flying 14 hours from Adelaide to Doha is a fairly uncomfortable trip without worrying about whether the captain is sober enough to fly the plane.

I have been on a few hair-raising flights in my time. On every occasion it has been the re-assuring tone of the pilot on the PA which has settled everybody’s nerves.

Once on a flight home from Mallorca, the pilot had to abort the landing when we were about ten feet above the tarmac at Edinburgh. Even the cabin crew looked terrified. All of us immediately relaxed when the captain’s voice came over the tannoy.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as you have noticed, weather conditions today are a little bit blowy and we caught a pocket of wind just before touchdown, so the safest course of action was to stay in the air,” intoned the captain. “We are going to re-approach the runway from the western flightpath. Hopefully we’ll have you all down on the ground in a few minutes.”

It would have been much less comforting to hear: “By Christ, that was a close one, folks. As you can tell it’s f***ing windy up here and I couldn’t really see where I was going. To be honest, it would have been pretty bloody difficult landing this crate in high wind even if I was sober. But, between us, I’m totally blootered. I’m going to get a cup of black coffee down my neck and give it another go. Let’s have a wee song in the meantime. Oh, show me the way to go home…”

On my journey home, before the final leg back to Edinburgh, I spent the best part of four hours unsuccessfully trying to find somewhere in Doha to get a beer. I now realise this was a good thing. The one advantage in spending a four-hour layover in an alcohol-free airport is that you know the pilot will be sober when you take off.