An enterprising director could make a United Pilots Gone Wild! video out of the two who were too drunk to fly, the one that was running brothels all over Houston and the United Express pilot and co-pilot who got into a fight.

Now a Chicago O’Hare-based United Express captain for ExpressJet, the same Express carrier where a flight couldn’t continue because pilots were fighting, has been arrested in a Colorado castration case. And it gets even stranger.

A man charged with using an Army surgical kit to remove the testicles of a transgender woman is an airline captain based at Chicago O’Hare, the I-Team has learned.

James Pennington, 57, was arrested on Thursday by police in Denver, Colorado and charged with suspicion of first degree assault when he allegedly castrated a transgender woman during a makeshift operation in the woman’s apartment.

The pilot lives in Denver but commutes to O’Hare where’s he’s based for ExpressJet, and has flown with the carrier for twelve years.

Reportedly the transgender woman’s wife “observed the 90 minute illicit surgery” on Wednesday and then called for an ambulance when “a large amount of blood” gushed from the incision three hours later.

This was apparently a consensual surgery performed using a military field surgical kit.

A police affidavit states that Pennington used a scalpel to surgically disconnect and remove the victim’s two testicles and then stitched up the incision.

On the one hand it harkens to the days of back alley abortions. On the other perhaps it says something about modern day health insurance coverage. Mostly for me I wonder how markets are made like this, connecting black market pilot-surgeon and patient wanting to be castrated.

This arrest lends new meaning to flight cancellations “due to crew availability.”

(HT: Ken A.)