Gold!

[msbbarratt]

There's reports in Nikkei news in Japan that a large quantity of gold (several dozen kg) has been discovered behind toilet wall trim panels on a Vanilla Air flight from Taipei to Osaka. A stewardess noticed the panel was out of place, took a look, spotted a number of black plastic bags that contained the gold.

It seems that this is just one of a number of incidents in the region where trim panels have been removed and items hidden. Seems like a smuggling gang has had a long established modus operandi...

The safety problem I guess is if this kind of hiding place becomes unavailable to the smugglers they may place it somewhere more dangerous. Seems that it's not possible to guarantee aircraft security on the ground in some parts of the world anymore.

[EDLB]

Extremely strange. Gold worth in the millions of dollars can be transported in lots of other ways, does not smell, and is in most cases legal to import. Why go to the fuzz of dealing with airport security.

[msbbarratt]

Legal, but taxable...

Found an English version of the article:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Markets/Commodities/Gold-smugglers-take-a-shine-to-Japan

The trick exploits the fact that aircraft that do an international leg then go on to do a domestic flight. Someone on the international flight stashes the gold in the toilet, and then someone else catches the domestic flight and recovers it. Not entirely sure how one gets lumps of gold through security on departure; unless they simply take it along as personal property.

Sounds far from ideal having some passenger start taking the aircraft to bits midflight.

[EDLB]

With its high density the chance to get gold bars undetected through a roentgen scanner are nil. Ship the stuff with some heavy machinery or mold even some machine parts Goldfinger style. All much easier and more safe than hide the stuff in a plane and let it detect by random people.

[Metro man]

Smuggling gold into India is big business, it's the worlds largest consumer of the stuff and an estimated 700kgs a day gets sneaked through.

Gold has always been a safe way to store wealth compared to paper money which may be cancelled or subject to inflation, shares which can become worthless overnight and you can't take land or property with you when you move.

[Fratemate]

Is this a time machine forum; the gold discovery on the Vanilla flight was ages ago.

[DaveReidUK]

July 9th.

Gold bars found on Taipei-Osaka Vanilla Air flight: report | Society | FOCUS TAIWAN - CNA ENGLISH NEWS (http://focustaiwan.tw/news/asoc/201707100005.aspx)