Planeload of Cocaine Seized as Pilot Lands

SANTA PAULA —  U.S. Customs agents Wednesday seized 520 pounds of cocaine and arrested a California man forced to land at the Santa Paula Airport after his twin-engine plane ran out of gas.

In one of Ventura County’s largest drug busts ever, the 52-year-old pilot was taken into custody in Santa Paula and will be arraigned today at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, said John Hensley, the customs special agent in charge. The suspect’s name was not released.

Agents boarded the Cessna Skyknight and found 14 duffel bags containing about 240 kilograms of cocaine wrapped in plastic. They also found three loaded guns, officials said.

The pilot was arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling and possession, illegal entry, having an aircraft equipped with smuggling equipment and firearms violations, Hensley said.

Customs agents had been tracking the plane for about 180 miles after their radar in Riverside picked up the aircraft about 7:30 a.m. heading north from Mexico.

Customs spokesman Mike Fleming said the plane aroused suspicion because it was flying at an unusually low altitude--about 150 feet, at least a mile below normal. Agents had received no report that the plane would be entering the United States, he said. The craft also was not using a transponder.

“All of those factors lead you to believe that you might have a potential air smuggling case,” Fleming said. “When the plane approached the border, it appeared to dive to avoid radar detection.”

Hensley said he did not know the man’s destination or his point of departure, though given the plane’s fuel capacity, he believed that the plane was headed for a less populated area along the Central Coast.

When the pilot failed to land in San Diego or Yuma, Ariz., to undergo customs inspections, federal agents began trailing him.

They followed him to the small municipal airport in Santa Paula, and warned local police there by radio that a suspected smuggler was landing.

When the man landed the plane around 10 a.m., a team of Santa Paula police officers wearing bulletproof vests were waiting for him on the runway with their submachine guns drawn.

“He had run out of gas,” said Bob Czyrklis, a customs agent based in Oxnard. “He maybe expected that he would be able to land, jump out of the plane and run.”

Hensley said the suspect had been following a “serpentine, circuitous route.”

“I have no reason to believe that was his final destination based on his flight pattern,” he said.