# British Airways Pilot Fired For Snorting A Line Of Cocaine Off Of A Topless **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 29, 2023, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863 "2023-09-29T14:12:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2023, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/41 "2023-09-30T21:48:31Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > @LSLGuy would know for sure, but my recollection is that passenger airlines have a 24 hour policy for pilots and attendants: no drinking, no drugs within 24 hours of reporting for duty. Breaking that rule is a firing offence. Yeah it’s I case of “may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”, I guess? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2023, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/42 "2023-10-01T00:21:14Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > I may be profoundly lecherous, but my education is sadly lacking in the Classics. > > I’ll take one for the team here and admit my ignorance and plead for someone of more refined knowledge to explain it to me and the rest of the silent head-scratchers out there. Shame we don’t have the old :question marks over head: smiley like on vBulletin. It’s actually from Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. In his play _Doctor Faustus_, the original “Make a Deal with the Devil” guy, who trades his soul for 24 years of power. In the course of this he meets Helen of TRoy, and learns that she is as beautiful as advertised, leading to these lines spoken by him: > [@](#): > > Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, > And burnt the topless towers of Ilium— > Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.— > **[The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus From the Quarto of 1604](https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/779/pg779-images.html)** As far as I know, the phrase “topless towers”, referring to Troy, don’t appear in the Classical World, or anywhere else before Marlowe. But the phrase has become fastened to Troy and the Trojan War. This is also where we got “the face that launched a thousand ships” – also originated by Marlowe, not Homer. And “Sweet Helen” was used as the title of a 1969 science fiction story by Charles W. Runyon, who obviously expected his readers to fill in the rest of the quotation – “make me immortal with a kiss”, because the story shows the potentially awful results of such a kiss. [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?53521](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?53521) ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2023, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/43 "2023-10-01T00:29:49Z")
But–why couldn’t he just settle for a cup of tea? /s 🧐 ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2023, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/44 "2023-10-01T00:56:02Z")
I told my mother about this story, and she immediately said, without missing a beat: “Pics, or it didn’t happen.” ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2023, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/45 "2023-10-01T11:15:04Z")
The guy would have been drug tested as soon as some authority figure interrupted his work day. So there will at least be documentary evidence of whether the cocaine was real. And what his BAC was at that time, which can be sorta extrapolated backwards in time. Plus any credit card charges anywhere during his time down there. I’ve never personally seen wild shit on layovers quite _that_ wild. But I’ve seen some wild shit over the years. Some people live to party and somehow they have pretty good party-radar for finding like-minded people of the appropriate age & gender. ---
**Author:** ![PatrickLondon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/patricklondon/32/4422_2.png) [@PatrickLondon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatrickLondon)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2023, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/46 "2023-10-01T12:03:44Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > “snogging” means “making out” as far as I’ve always heard it in context. a.k.a “tonsil hockey” ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2023, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/47 "2023-10-02T13:57:28Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Half the fun of doing cool shit is bragging about it later. > > The critical skill is having some sense of which cool stuff is so far out you need to keep it a secret from everyone forever, which cool stuff can be told to your close friends who’re also cultural peers (AKA other pilots of his age group), and which shit you can publish on the internet. > > Besides being something really wrong to do in the first place, that event was a category 1:“sooper sekrit” event that he treated as category 3:“tell ze vorld!”. Oops That’s what gets me about this. With those two Southwest pilots, the one caught on a hot mike complaining about working with “gays, grannies, and grandes” and the other one ranting about liberals and rolling coal, at least those two dumbasses _thought_ they were having private conversations. This idiot doesn’t even have that flimsy fig leaf. > [@ekedolphin](#): > > told my mother about this story, and she immediately said, without missing a beat: > > “Pics, or it didn’t happen.” I find your mother’s ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to her newsletter. ---
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2023, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/48 "2023-10-02T14:05:58Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > How amazingly **stupid** can someone be?! Cocaine is a helluva drug. ---
**Author:** ![Digger11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@Digger11](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digger11)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2023, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/49 "2023-10-02T14:11:58Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > My high-register BritSpeak is decent, but my British slang is weak. Would “snogging” be drinking, making out short of sex, outright sex, or something completely different? You’ve clearly never read the Harry Potter books. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2023, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/50 "2023-10-02T14:17:30Z")
You’re right I haven’t. Fiction holds no interest for me; the real world is endlessly fascinating on its own. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2023, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/51 "2023-10-02T14:34:36Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Can’t fly if you have them in your system. Also can’t fly if you have an illness for which those things are necessary. My wife’s niece is a senior captain for an American airline. She was in town last night and we were talking about this incident. She confirmed what you’ve said here. At one point she had shoulder surgery and was grounded by it. She had to be drug-free before resuming duties. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2023, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863/52 "2023-10-02T15:12:31Z")
Thanks to everyone who’s filled in my half-remembered memory of the rules that apply to air crew re drugs and alcohol. Interesting thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-airways-pilot-fired-for-snorting-a-line-of-cocaine-off-of-a-topless/990863.md?page=2)