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October 10, 2007
Plane Loaded with Coke Crashes in Yucatan
This is a pretty interesting story. Apparently, a Gulfstream II carrying 3.6 tons of cocaine crashed on the Yucatan Peninsula last Monday. BoingBoing and the Austin American Statesman are reporting that the plane may be owned by the U.S. Government.
Some news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington and Guantánamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantánamo.
No terrorist suspects are known to have been transferred to Guantánamo directly from the United States.The jet, with the tail number N987SA, changed hands twice in recent weeks. But how it ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery.
The Mexican attorney general's office said the blue and white Gulfstream II crashed Monday in a remote jungle area on the Yucatán Peninsula. Authorities seized 132 bags of cocaine weighing four tons.
Apparently, there are a lot of unmarked police cars parked in front of the address of the current registered owner of the plane.
The New York Post has some more interesting observations on the plane's ownership.
Here's the plane's last flight path according to FlightAware. More details on Airliners.net.
Update: This is odd. The link is now broken to the Airliners.net story, but they definitely had a long post on it earlier today. Either they moved the story, or they took it down. Here's google's cache of the forum topic before it was removed. You can see some vestiges of the deleted posts by searching on the tail number in their general (civil) aviation forum. The clot thickens.
Spanish newspaper report of the forced landing: http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/450941.html
Spanish language news story: http://www.fsmex.com/foros/viewtopic.php?t=21274&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Crash summary:
The G-II was coming from Colombia to Cancun.
- It was intercepted by the Mexican Air Force near Cancun (no information reg. the intercepting aircraft, probably a PC-7)
- The plane tried to land in the jungle (possible a clandestine runway) but had to make a go around.
- On a second attempt the plane went down. Possibly it ran out of fuel because there was no fire (pictures confirm this).
- At the time of this communication the Mexican Army and Air Force had not found the crash site.
Quoting Bennett123 (Reply 12):
Do you have any id on the BAC 111.
According to several press reports it was XB-KCE.
Again, sorry the link is spanish.
http://www.noticaribe.com.mx/cancun/...custodian_sospechosa_aeronave.html
The aircraft is registered to:
Donna Blue Aircraft Inc.
Coconut Creek, FL
And since 1980 the plane was operated by Owens Illinois then sold to AGI Holiding Corp and then sold to S/A Holdings LLC and finally sold to Donna Blue Aircraft Inc.
The plane was MANAGED by this company:
Air Rutter International
4310 Donald Douglas Drive
Long Beach, CA 90808
prior to its sale and that company has been in business for 12 years(coinkydink?)
The General Manager refused to identify the previous owner stating that he was a respected businessman.
The owner of the website DONNABLUEAIRCRAFT.COM is:
joao malago
4811 Lyons Technology Parkway
Suite 08
Coconut Creek, FL 33075
US
Domain Name WhoIs Link:
Domain name: DONNABLUEAIRCRAFT.COM
Administrative Contact:
malago, joao Whois: Donnablueairyahoocom
4811 Lyons Technology Parkway
Suite 08
Coconut Creek, FL 33075
US
Phone:+1.5612397585 Fax: +1.8134342358
The website is just a template they didn't finish customizing. The menlo park address is the address of the homestead.com company that hosts it.
4811 Lyons Technology Pkwy
Pompano Beach, FL 33073
is the address that Google maps pulls up when using the coconut creek address.
Posted by Rob Kiser on October 10, 2007 at 8:47 AM
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