BREAKING NEWS – Melbourne, Australia – A light aircraft overloaded with cocaine crashed on take-off on its way to Australia, exposing a Melbourne-based crime syndicate and leading to the arrest of five men with alleged links to the Italian mafia.
The Cessna aircraft, which was stuffed with more than 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of cocaine, went down while attempting to leave a remote airstrip in Papua New Guinea. The inexperienced pilot was arrested two days later, after surrendering himself to the police. The pilot acknowledged that this was his first solo flight. And according to the police, even though the drug cargo was heavy and the plane barely got off the ground, he incorrectly assumed he would easily be able to gain altitude, concluding that the cocaine would automatically make the aircraft fly “high”.