Russia's flag air carrier Aeroflot has taken another blow to its reputation after a newspaper detailed an incident in which more than 100 passengers demanded that an apparently drunk pilot be taken off the plane.

The first sign of trouble came when the pilot slurred his words during the pre-flight announcement, The Moscow Times said on Tuesday. The paper quoted passengers aboard the flight from Moscow to New York on December 28, including one of its own reporters.

"The first thought that occurred to me was, 'This guy is drunk,' " passenger Khatuna Kobiashvili told the newspaper, an English-language daily. "His speech was so slurred it was hard to tell what language he was speaking."