A few JetBlue planes were apparently carrying some extra cargo, unbeknownst to the airline, after maintenance workers discovered three kilos of cocaine stashed inside compartments on two aircraft recently.
A spokesman for the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office said workers at the HAECO Airframe facility in Lake City, FL found the first kilo of drugs on a plane on July 20, before adding two more kilos to the pile from another plane that was found to have drugs hidden inside it on July 24, CBS 47 reports.
Workers told the police in both cases that they found bricks inside a compartment under the right wing, which is the wall of the luggage hold.
“Someone lost three kilos of powder cocaine, which is a street value of about $180,000. So someone’s either going to get fired or maybe lose a limb or something,” said the Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
The first plane had flown from the Dominican Republic to JFK in New York City. Each plane is taken out of service every three months and flown to HAECO for a routine maintenance checkup.
“When the planes come here, they are basically checked from top to bottom. Every system is checked. Every panel is removed,” the spokesman explained.
A spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Jacksonville office said foreign drug suppliers will pay airport workers or baggage handlers to hide drugs inside airplanes.
It’s likely that in this case, whoever was supposed to retrieve the drugs didn’t show up in time to catch the planes before they flew to Lake City for maintenance.
This isn’t JetBlue’s first brush with drug smuggling: in March, a flight attendant for the airline was accused of leaving a bag full of cocaine at an LAX security checkpoint and fleeing on foot, before she was finally arrested in NYC a few days later.
3 kilos of cocaine found on JetBlue planes months after flight attendant caught smuggling [CBS 47]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist