UPDATED: Southwest pilot arrested at Savannah airport, charged with DUI

Allsop is in the Federal Aviation Administration’s database of airmen as an airline pilot with an address in Bedford, New Hampshire.

Dallas-based Southwest said the incident occurred on Flight 3772 from Savannah on Wednesday morning, and the employee has been removed from duty. Attempts to reach Allsop by phone Wednesday were not immediately successful.

The flight was bound for Chicago and was delayed by nearly five hours, according to FlightAware.com.

“Customers were accommodated on other flights and we apologize for the disruption to their travel plans,” Southwest said in a statement. “There’s nothing more important to Southwest than the safety of our employees and customers.”

It was a Transportation Security Administration officer who contacted local law enforcement after encountering a pilot in the crew screening lane “who smelled of alcohol and appeared intoxicated,” according to a TSA spokesperson. “TSA always reminds passengers that if you see something, say something,” and that’s what the TSA officer did “when they saw something out of the norm.”

Law enforcement responded to the boarding gate where Allsop was sitting in the cockpit doing preflight checks before departure, according to an incident report obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The officer asked Allsop to step out onto the jet bridge and during conversation “detected a strong odor of what seemed to be alcohol,” the incident report said. Allsop told the officer his last drink was the previous night when he drank “a few light beers,” the incident report said.

The officer, who also wrote that he observed Allsop had “bloodshot, watery eyes, and a flushed complexion,” conducted a field sobriety test on the jet bridge and noted a failure to maintain balance and swaying while walking, among other results, the report said.

Allsop declined to submit to a blood test, and was arrested for DUI — less safe, according to the incident report.

Southwest asked that Allsop be released for the company to carry out its own investigation, but a lieutenant instead opted to take Allsop to the Chatham County Detention Center, the report said.

The FAA has said a pilot will be removed from a plane if their breath alcohol concentration level is 0.04 or greater. Pilots also must not drink within eight hours before flying, the so-called “bottle to throttle” time period. Some airlines have stricter requirements.

It’s not the first time a pilot has been arrested on suspicion of DUI. Among the incidents, a Delta Air Lines pilot was arrested in 2023 at Edinburgh Airport in Scotland shortly before he was about to fly to New York. In 2019, a Delta pilot was arrested at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on suspicion of being intoxicated.