A British Airways flight from Cancun, Mexico, was delayed by more than 24 hours after what a passenger described as a “huge cartel drug bust,” with a video of police pulling what appear to be blocks of cocaine from a suitcase beside the aircraft.
The flight was meant to depart at around 9:40 pm on April 8 after the plane meant to be taking weary holidaymakers home arrived a little behind schedule on Tuesday night.
Huge Cartel Drug BustBA2202 – Cancun to Gatwick – Bricks Found.
byu/Skyson770 inBritishAirways
But just as the first passengers started to board British Airways flight BA2202 to London Gatwick, the boarding process was quickly halted, and the passengers who had already boarded were led back to the gate.
With everyone wondering what was going on, some of the passengers noticed a lot of activity below the Boeing 777-200 aircraft from the windows of the gate area.
One passenger described in a post on Reddit how they first realized something was amiss when the Mexican National Guard and local police showed up at the gate area with sniffer dogs and what appeared to be drug swabs.
At this point, the passenger filmed law enforcement pulling what appears to be bricks of cocaine from a case just below the aircraft – despite the best efforts to shield what they were doing from public view.
As the investigation continued, the police carried out a search of the aircraft and that took so long that the cabin crew ran out of legal hours to operate the flight back to London Gatwick.
In a statement, a spokesperson said the flight then had to be delayed overnight due to reasons “circumstances entirely out of our control.” A statement from the airline continued: “We apologized to customers for the overnight delay to their flight to London Gatwick.”
Once the flight was canceled, passengers were taken to nearby hotels and the flight operated as normal the following night.
The Mexican National Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bet there were some unhappy customers — in Jolly Old!