I am sorry to say this is not an isolated incident Andy. Not every UK pilot is flying just for the fun of it or the £100 cup of tea. There is a great temptation for some to fund flying from the black market.
Here is an ITV report from Feb 2017.
'Respectable' pilot who smuggled cocaine worth millions is jailed
A pilot caught with his trousers down smuggling cocaine worth more than £2.4 million into the UK has been jailed for 23 years.
Dutch national John Buwalda hid behind a respectable business front to bring bags containing 48lb (22kg) of high purity cocaine in a light aircraft from the Netherlands to Kent's Rochester Airport in June last year.
Recorder Oliver Sells QC said theirs was a "professional, commercial, international smuggling enterprise" which was "executed with great precision".
Buwalda was caught on CCTV landing his light aircraft at Rochester then going to and from the plane with a suitcase, before checking into a nearby hotel.
Officers then watched as Polish national Polak got two sports bags from his van and went up to divorced father-of two Buwalda's hotel room for the handover.
As he walked away carrying two full sports bags, Polak was arrested by officers from the joint National Crime Agency and Metropolitan Police Service Organised Crime Partnership (OCP).
Hotel staff told officers Buwalda had arrived earlier that day with two suitcases but checked in for the day only, as he had done several times before.
NCA officer Jim McMorrow told the trial how he arrested Buwalda while he was sitting on the toilet.
The Old Bailey was told the drugs, which were found to ha
'Respectable' pilot who smuggled cocaine worth millions is jailed | Meridian - ITV News 
At the end of May this year the Liverpool Echo ran this report.
Men who plotted with Merseyside pilot to smuggle drugs over the channel in a hire plane jailed - Liverpool Echo
Two men who conspired with a Merseyside pilot to fly cocaine and heroin across the channel in a rented light aircraft were jailed.
Wayne Coates, 49 and Jamie Sharples, 30, had been due to collect a delivery of class A drugs from Southport pilot Philip Molyneux. Coates travelled to meet him at an airfield near Clacton, Essex on the morning of 31 October 2012.
However, Molyneux, never made the rendezvous. He had been picked up by French customs and police in Abbeville airfield prior to take-off. French officers found 12kg of cocaine and a kilo of heroin in a bag in his plane. The French had been tipped off after British authorities noted suspicious activity involving the aircraft, which was rented from a firm in Blackpool.
If cut and sold in the UK the haul would have had a potential street value of over £1.5m.
Following his arrest the French authorities found calls and messages on Molyneux’s phone from numbers which were later linked by the National Crime Agency to Coates and Sharples. One, from Coates, said “Ring me Phil, what the f*** going on?” Another from Sharples stated “Get bk to me asap”.
