An Australian pilot working for a Dubai airline was sentenced to prison today after being arrested in September for reporting to work drunk in England. Emirates captain John Cronly-Dillon drank so much before attempting to board his flight at Heathrow that he registered nearly seven times over the legal British limit.

Cronly-Dillon, 51, was just minutes away from flying a loaded passenger plane to Dubai and had joked he would "not blow up my own plane" when items were confiscated from his baggage.

Cronly-Dillon pleaded guilty to one count of "performing an activity ancillary to an aviation function" and showed no reaction when Judge Usha Karu told him there was no alternative but to end his 25-year flying career with immediate imprisonment.

The judge added:

"The courts take a very dim view of passengers who get drunk on an aircraft, and it is much worse if it is the pilot, who has a high level of duty of care to those he would have been looking after."

Cronly-Dillon will serve four months, then be forced to return to Australia from Dubai where he lived during the incident.