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(CNN) – If this makes you nervous to fly, stop reading now.
A Japan Airlines pilot admitted that he had failed a breathalyzer test shortly before flying from London to Tokyo, the British Press Association reported.
Katsutoshi Jitsukawa, 42, had 10 times more alcohol in his blood when he was arrested, the metropolitan police said.
On Thursday, the pilot pleaded guilty in court to exceeding the alcohol limit.
Japan Airlines' JL44 flight was due to take off only 50 minutes after the tests revealed that Jitsukawa's first officer had 189 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood in his body.
The legal limit for alcohol for airline pilots is 20 mg.
Jitsukawa was discovered after the driver of a bus smelled of alcohol and called the police, according to the NHK in Japan.
The pilot was to fly a Boeing 777 with 244 seats. He is still in detention and will hear his sentence on 29 November.
Jitsukawa acknowledged that he had drunk two bottles of wine and a pint of beer the night before the flight, reported NHK.
Japan Airlines is excused for the incident. The airline said that "safety remains our top priority" and that she "will implement immediate measures to prevent any future incident".
The flight was operated by the other two pilots and took off more than an hour late.
This is not the only case of a Japanese airline forced to apologize for an alcohol-related incident, according to the France-Presse agency. At the end of October, All Nippon Airways apologized after a pilot felt sick after spending a night drinking, causing delays of five local flights.
But the situation is not exclusive to Japanese airlines. In June, Julian Monaghan, an experienced British Airways pilot, was jailed for eight months after discovering that he had exceeded the alcohol limit four times before a London-Mauritius flight.
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