Airline fires pilot allegedly caught with pot in Kazahkstan

Air Astana fired a pilot who was allegedly caught with a bag of marijuana in his pocket. The pilot then failed a subsequent drug test and was let go by the Kazakhstan-based carrier, Reuters reports.

Reuters writes "the Air Astana captain had just landed his Airbus 320 after a flight from Moscow to Almaty, the former Soviet republic's biggest city, when he drew the attention of a sniffer dog during a routine check at the airport, local newspaper Vremya reported."

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Local police searched the man and found a “small bag” of marijuana in the man’s coat, according to the newspaper’s report. The pilot was detained and an ensuing drug test found trace amounts of the drug in the man’s system, the report adds.

Vremya says the pilot apparently told authorities that he smoked marijuana the night before the Moscow-to-Almaty flight and had used the drug for three years.

In a Friday statement to Reuters, Air Astana says it has a no-tolerance policy for drugs or alcohol violations and that it immediately fired the pilot. "The airline regularly tests its crews for alcohol and drugs using a random sampling method,” Air Astana says in its statement.

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