Large Cocaine Stash Discovered During AA Maintenance Check
Jeff Edwards January 30, 2017
Maintenance workers discovered the illicit shipment of contraband during a routine safety check at the American Airlines maintenance base in Tulsa.
Workers tasked with performing routine maintenance on an American Airlines Boeing 757 found something very much out of place inside one of the aircraft’s electronics bays. The AA mechanics at the company’s maintenance base at Tulsa International Airport (TUL) discovered seven bricks of cocaine hidden near the nose of the plane they were working on this Sunday.
Authorities say that a last-minute schedule change may have foiled an unknown smuggler’s plans.
“This plane actually came from Bogota and landed in Miami, and got picked up on the computer system for routine maintenance,” Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Mike Moore told NBC affiliate KFOR in Oklahoma City. “Usually that happens in Miami, and they were overloaded and that’s when it got here.”
Police say that workers immediately contacted proper authorities after finding the unauthorized payload hidden in the aircraft. The plane had hours earlier completed a scheduled trip from El Dorado International Airport (BOG) to Miami International Airport (MIA) where it was pulled from service for routine maintenance. According to law enforcement, approximately twelve kilos of cocaine were recovered from the aircraft.
American Airlines officials told local media outlets that the company has started an investigation into how the large shipment of drugs came to be hidden in a restricted area of the BOG to MIA-bound passenger plane.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
And this could have been a bomb.....Cmon, TSA find the guy who was going to retrieve the stuff in Miami, and throw him in jail! I fly out of there several times a month!
Where else would they expect that type of cargo to be but in the nose?
Love that they found the blow in the nose.