A second British Airways plane has been involved in a massive drug bust after an engineer reportedly discovered a block of cocaine with a street value estimated at £100,00 ($131,000) hidden inside a lavatory after it arrived at London Gatwick Airport.
According to the British tabloid newspaper The Sun, the startling discovery occurred after the plane was towed to a maintenance hangar shortly after it arrived at Gatwick after an overnight flight from Orlando, Florida.
The unexpected decision to take the plane for engineering checks in a hangar that is off-limits to most airport workers is believed to have foiled the smuggling gang’s ploy to retrieve the block of cocaine from the plane between flights.
According to sources quoted by The Sun, the block of cocaine was found behind a panel within the bin of one of the lavatories on the Boeing 777. It could have been hidden by a bent cleaner or someone else with access to the plane during its turnaround in Orlando.
Once on the ground in Gatwick, the gang who arranged the shipment would have arranged for someone with security clearance to pick up the block and then use their special airport privileges to bypass routine customs checks.
The news comes just a day after it was revealed that a second British Airways Boeing 777 bound for London Gatwick was delayed for 24 hours in Cancun, Mexico, after local police found a stash of what appeared to be blocks of cocaine hidden in a suitcase onboard the plane.
Passengers were starting to board the aircraft on April 8 for the overnight flight to London when police and Mexico’s National Guard swarmed the plane and halted its departure so that they could conduct a thorough sweep of the aircraft for any other hidden narcotics.
British Airways apologized for the inconvenience caused to passengers after the plane was held on the ground for so long that the crew ran out of legal hours to operate the flight to London.
While unusual, it’s not unheard of for drug cartels to corrupt airport and airline workers to help move drugs around the world undetected.
In 2017, ex-Emirates flight attendant Zohaab Sadique was arrested in Manchester after he was found with a huge stash of drugs hidden in his cabin bag after working a flight from Dubai.
Sadique had picked up the drugs after working on a flight to Pakistan, where cleaners had strapped the narcotics to the underside of a toilet bin on the plane he was working on.
Once Sadique had collected the drugs, he managed to smuggle them through Dubai Airport on two separate occasions as he couriered them to the north of England.
Following Sadique’s conviction for drug smuggling, National Crime Agency (NCA) operations manager Jon Hughes described bent flight attendants as “very dangerous people” because of the special security privileges they are granted as well as their knowledge of different security rules.
Oh sod off..
BA apologized? With a Z? Not apologised? With an S.
You make up the stupidest crap to womansplain incompetence.
Just stop now before you make your lack of knowledge even stupider. “Dumber” as you illiterates would say.