Drug gangs seeking safer ways to smuggle a steady flow of Colombian cocaine through Jamaica are increasingly taking to the skies, using light planes to deliver tons of drugs at remote airstrips or to make air drops to waiting boats.

In response, anti-drug cops are shifting tactics to meet the trend in airborne smuggling that utilises small single- and twin-engine planes.

The upsurge in drug flights has not only riveted the attention of narcotics cops, it has raised concerns among the island’s legitimate light-plane operators. They worry that as police crack down on the drug flights, they’ll be tarnished and suffer a loss of privileges as the drug war focuses on light planes.

The upsurge in drug flights is “something that we are very, very concerned about”, Jamaica’s top narcotics officer, Carl Williams, told the Sunday Observer.

Cops first noticed an increasing number of drug flights four years ago. The trend has grown since then, Williams related, as smugglers have sought to outwit police who were seizing increasing numbers of their speedy “go-fast” boats. The sleek vessels are regarded as workhorses, hauling about 80 per cent of the 100 metric tons of Colombian cocaine that’s estimated to pass through Jamaica annually, en route to the United States and Europe.

Departing at night from Colombia’s northern coast, the go-fast boats became increasingly popular in the early 1990s. Before then, smugglers were fond of using light aircraft. But as authorities became more adept at tracking and intercepting light planes, they cut back drastically on drug flights and resorted to go-fast boats.

“Now, we see the aircraft coming back, giving us a whole lot of trouble,” said Williams, who spoke publicly about the trend for the first time during a conference in Kingston last Tuesday on maritime security.

Light planes now haul about 15 per cent of the cocaine that passes through Jamaica annually, Williams estimated. Thanks to Jamaica’s largely unpopulated coastline and strategic geographic location, it’s one of the region’s main transshipment points for Colombian cocaine.

Jamaica is also the Caribbean’s biggest ganja producer, and light planes play a role in that trade as well, said Williams.

Besides hauling drugs, light planes are now being used as “spotters”. Flying above go-fast boats, they advise the boat crews about the location of anti-drug vessels.

Piloted by Jamaicans and foreigners, the drug planes also carry a man known as a “kicker”. He boots packages of cocaine or ganja out the door to waiting boats, and he’ll load or unload the illicit cargo at airstrips, a task that takes less than five minutes.

So nimble are the light planes that any decent pilot can land or take-off from makeshift dirt or grass airstrips.

“They can put them down just about anywhere,” said Williams.

The drug trade’s most sinister aspects have hurt Jamaica, with its violence, negative international publicity, and the economic havoc caused by money laundering.

Williams blamed the drug trade and accompanying trade in illicit arms for fuelling much of Jamaica’s intolerable murder rate.

The island suffered 956 murders last year, one of the world’s highest murder rates per capita. That was despite a 15 per cent drop in cumulative murders for two years straight.

Williams said police had detained about 10 airplanes over the past few years for suspected drug running. He acknowledged, however, that police were able to seize only two or three planes.

One was a twin-engine Piper Navajo that was seized on July 13, 2003 following a shoot-out at Tinson Pen Aerodrome. The bullet-pocked plane nevertheless managed to embark on a suspected drug run, and then returned five hours later.

Police later arrested the Bahamian pilot and eight other men – including two cops. But a judge dismissed drug-running charges against the men last week, citing procedural errors in the case. Williams blasted the decision as a “victory for the drug-trafficking community”.

Although police have yet to make a case against a major drug kingpin, Williams said police would eventually bring in a “Mr Big”.

“We know exactly who they are,” he said, adding that local kingpins hide behind legitimate businesses.

Making a case would take patience, he said, and would be facilitated with a number of new laws coming into effect. They’ll tighten banking laws and give police greater powers in respect to wire-tapping.

Williams declined to say how intelligence is developed concerning incoming drug flights. But some of the drug flights are, undoubtedly, spotted by big high-flying jet and turbo-prop planes – virtual airborne radar stations – operated by the US Department of Defence and Customs Service. The planes are based in Aruba and Curacao and support the region’s anti-drug efforts – part of a growing partnership between Jamaica, the United States, and United Kingdom in the drug war.

To Jamaica’s small close-knit general aviation community, the upsurge in drug flights comes as no surprise. Local pilots are wary over an increasing number of light planes on the island, which “cannot be accounted for as legitimate,” observed Christopher Read, managing director of Airpak Express, an islandwide courier service.

“Up until a couple of years ago, we (pilots) could tell you about every airplane in Jamaica – who owns it and how it was being used: tourism, deliveries, sightseeing,” said Read, whose company utilises Cessna 172s, single-engine four-seaters.

“But over the last couple of years, there has been a sudden change,” Read continued. “Now, there are a number of airplanes at airports, and nobody knows who the owners are – or what the airplanes do for their existence.”

For Read, the increase in unknown planes evokes an ominous sense of deja vu.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, he related, legitimate aircraft operators became unintended casualties in the drug war, when authorities restricted general aviation to stop drug flights that were common at the time.

The number of aerodromes shrank from 60 to the six that exist today, he said. He worried that general aviation might suffer again.

“Legitimate users have suffered very adversely over the years, the consequence of a few illegal users abusing the system; and we have a continued vested interest to ensure that our operations are maintained in a legitimate mode,” he said.