Zimbabwe’s Civil Aviation Authority has impounded a US registered cargo plane after staff noticed blood dripping from what turned out to be a dead body during refuelling.
The Florida-based Western Global Airlines Trijet MD11 had been en route from Germany to South Africa when the captain requested a technical landing at Harare International having previously had a similar request refused in Mozambique. After the as yet unidentified corpse was found, officials boarded the plane to find a small fortune in cash on board.
Western Global Airlines, which confirmed on Monday that it owned the plane, said in a statement that the corpse was suspected to have been a stowaway “who may have entered the airplane during a previous stop.”
The airline said the plane had been leased to Network Airline Management, a longtime customer based in Britain that uses Western Global Airlines aircraft and crews for several flights a week from Europe to Africa. Western Global said the cash was a shipment for the South African Reserve Bank.
Officials at Network Airline Management, whose headquarters are at Gatwick Airport, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Herald, Zimbabwe’s leading newspaper, which was among the first to report the episode, said the plane had been “stashed with millions of [South African] rand.” One million rand is equivalent to about £45,500.
The newspaper also said South Africa’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, Vusi Mavimbela, confirmed the episode but could not give further details.
News agency accounts said the crew members — two Americans, a South African and a Pakistani — had not been aware of the corpse. The accounts speculated that the person found dead, who had apparently sneaked into the landing gear opening, was crushed when the gear retracted after take-off.
Western Global Airlines, which is privately owned, advertises itself as one of the world’s fastest-growing low-cost air cargo companies, with clients around the world. It flew dozens of humanitarian missions to West Africa during the height of the Ebola crisis.
