Peter wrote:
Just think what would happen if you were an unknowing passenger…
Or the unsuspecting pilot. Call me paranoid, but every time I flew back from Morocco to Spain, I made damn sure to check all the nooks and crannies of the airplane. After all, a pack of, say 5kgs of cocaine can easily be tucked away, even in a Cessna. And how often do you look into your tail cone?
On Friday 20th of January the Dutch police was notified by the British authorities that a small aircraft possibly loaded with narcotics was on its way to The Netherlands.
The aircraft landed at Teuge airport (EHTE) and the crew and aircraft was inspected. The police also made use of a detection dog.
Two suitcases with heroin of a total weight of 60kgs were found in the aircraft.
The men, aged 28 and 30 from Germany were arrested.
Aircraft is OE-FYZ from Rhein-Main Aviation (Egelsbach).
The track on flightradar24 is interesting:
Not sure what farm strip is NE of Chelmsford, perhaps they positioned at Earls Colne? An Austrian DA42 popping into East Anglia to pick up some packages is bound to raise suspicions. This is a good use of tax money, hope they keep catching these morons.
So what do you think, he was planning to smuggle into the UK and was “waved off” as he approached, so went home?
The Grumman Cheetah that we used to have at Andreas (till it got crashed – fortunately without injury – by the Chairman and Treasurer of the Association of Manx Pilots) was in its history used to smuggle and in the course of that was involved in a fatal accident. On landing in a field at night one of the smugglers walked through the prop arc while the engine was still running.
When I was based at Houston Gulf there was at least one drugs bust – one local pilot got jumped on by the police because he was walking his dog late at night on the airfield perimeter and they thought he was one of the smugglers. A couple of hours later, they arrested a couple who had rented a local flight school Warrior and gone to Mexico and returned with contraband (I don’t remember what sort). There was also a DPE (designated pilot examiner) who got busted all the way down to private as the FAA’s part of busting him after being caught people smuggling from Mexico (I think the FAA’s certificate action was on illegal charter, he would have also faced charges from the INS for the people smuggling part)
A couple of years back I sold a motorcycle in the UK and was paid in cash, and although you only have to declare above 10k equivalent when bringing cash here (IIRC it was about 3k), I was still half expecting this to be the time that Special Branch decided to do an inspection as I rolled into EGNS area M to top off the tanks!
Hadn’t thought it that way, assumed they picked up their criminal payload in the UK. The turning point in the UK appears to be Rivenhall, where so happens there is a Police helicopter station – so not the smartest, unless a Police helicopter was sent to identify them while airborne?
On FR24 you can see altitude pretty well. My free sub doesn’t show the “incident flight” (it shows some on 27th Jan) but the colour of the track posted above shows that no descent was made to the ground at the UK end.
I pay for FR24 and can confirm that the aircraft remained at 10,000’ all the way.
I initially thought that the little descent to 9000’ was an artefact, but I have looked more carefully and see that he started the descent at Mersea Island, stopped SW of Tiptree, started a climb again, then made the right turn back to Germany.
So it would be reasonable to assume that he started the descent intending to land, then either got the information that the landing was not safe or didn’t get the message that it was, so climbed back up and ran home.
But this was all in Class A airspace, so it would be interesting to know what he said to the LTMA controller!
