70 Melbourne Airport workers breached security to bring in drugs and other illegal products

Dozens of Melbourne Airport workers and airline crew have been busted helping organised criminals smuggle drugs and other illegal items into Victoria.

There has been a major crackdown on baggage handlers, airline workers and ground staff. Picture: David Caird

Dozens of Melbourne Airport workers and airline crew have been busted helping organised criminals smuggle drugs into Victoria.

In a major crackdown on baggage handlers, airline workers and ground staff, authorities have ramped up patrols of their own employees who have breached their inside knowledge of sensitive, high-level airport security to wave through drugs and other illegal products.

Specialist Border Force teams have uncovered 70 Melbourne Airport workers who breached security checks in the past year, with many of them suspected of working for organised criminals.

Melbourne Airport workers and airline crew have been busted helping organised criminals smuggle drugs into Victoria. Picture: David Caird

Air Border Security officers check the rear cargo hold walls. Picture: David Caird

Two international flight crew who worked while under the influence of illicit drugs were also among aviation insiders nabbed in the blitz.

Operation Jet Engine, a year-long initiative that zeroed in on airport workers across Victoria and Tasmania, found a slew of international cabin crew who had stashed drugs and tobacco in suitcases with false bottoms and who helped distribute illegal goods once in Australia.

The dedicated task force conducts in-depth searches of international flights arriving at and departing Melbourne Airport, using hi-tech portable X-ray machinery to scan an aircraft’s cargo spaces, baggage storage, crew’s sleeping areas and flight decks.

ABF Superintendent Kelly-Anne Parish said international criminals could not funnel drugs into the country without airport workers and international airline staff exploiting their positions as trusted industry insiders.

“We know that they’re involved with organised crime groups and transnational organised crime groups and they play a key role in facilitating border controlled drugs and other prohibited items into our community,” Ms Parish said.

“They understand the environment that they work in, they understand what our role is as Border Force officers and they understand avenues to exploit that.”

Specialist Border Force teams have uncovered 70 Melbourne Airport workers who breached security checks in the past year. Picture: David Caird

ABF Superintendent Kelly-Anne Parish at Melbourne Airport. Picture: David Caird

Border Force specialists have searched more than 1,300 planes and 500 airline employees, finding several other workers who were on drugs on the clock.

Meanwhile, a squatter was found to have been living in an abandoned airport building during one of more than 1000 vehicle and foot patrols of the precinct, which uncovered further workers with links to organised crime figures.

Ms Parish said criminals had resumed targeting airports as a way to smuggle drugs into the country, after switching tact to hijacking sea cargo shipments during the pandemic.

“We are now back at peak passenger numbers arriving into our airports around the country, and thousands and thousands of people working in this environment,” she said.

“We identified that there was a need to understand any new vulnerabilities and threats and build that intelligence picture to understand what’s happening in the environment.

“You will see us out in full force, particularly over the next 12 months. My message would be to stop what you’re doing because we will identify you and we will hold you to account for that behaviour.”

It is not the first time airport crew have been picked up in a major sting in Melbourne.

In 2019 under Operation Sunrise, federal police and border officials arrested nine Malindo Air workers over their roles in a $20m heroin trafficking plot that had flown under the radar for up to five years.

Originally published as 70 Melbourne Airport workers breached security to bring in drugs and other illegal products