According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, organized criminal groups have long focused on accelerating the transport of drugs and other illicit goods through the use of ships, containers or planes, and thus have been able transport even greater amounts of drugs worldwide.
Minority transport of cocaine or amphetamines is normally done on commercial aviation flights by people called “mules,” who resort to double-bottom suitcases or even swallow packages and transport them in their stomach or intestines.
According to a report by the Spanish newspaper Al Navío, it ensures that significant amounts of drugs, hundreds of kilos or tons, the cartels have their own planes, fishing boats, speedboats and even submarines.
Initially the preferred aircraft were the small Cessna, especially the 206 with its approximate 645 kilograms of payload and its double side door, which made loading and unloading easier.
As well as the Cessna 185 RG with its 725 kilograms of payload, with a retractable train and the ability to land and take off on short tracks.
According to the Iberian newspaper, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, led the largest air operation in Mexico before being captured for the second time, on February 22, 2014.
The Mexican authorities confiscated, between 2006 and 2014, 599 aircraft, which the cartel used to use to send drugs to the United States and all of Mexico, according to information from the Mexican Ministry of National Defense (Sedena).
Of the planes that were captured in Culiacán, Navolato and Ahome, municipalities of the state of Sinaloa, 60 were precisely Cessna 206.
On January 26, 2020, the illegal entry into Mexican airspace of a twin-engine Beechcraft model King 90 plane with false initials N-2204, from South America, was detected.
Ground reaction forces were immediately deployed, managing to locate the landing site of the ship northwest of Chetumal, Quintana Roo.
Some 26 packages with a total weight of approximately one ton that contained a substance with the properties of cocaine hydrochloride were seized.
On January 28, 2020, the Mexican Ministry of National Defense intercepted a Gulfstream III aircraft with the American initials N-18ZL loaded with a ton of cocaine. Gulfstream aircraft are one of the most sophisticated and expensive executive jets on the market.
Source: Laopinion
