A private plane loaded with 26 suitcases of cocaine, weighing more than 1500 pounds. Sounds like a plot point in a Hollywood heist movie, but it really happened in 2013.
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When the stash was discovered in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, on a plane bound for France, the pilots Pascal Fauret and Bruno Odos were taken into custody. Then, in another plot twist straight out of a movie, they escaped to their native France via boat in 2015. The two pilots were convicted in a 2019 trial and sentenced to six years in prison, but they appealed the verdict, and were ultimately acquitted in 2021.
Now the pilots appear in a new Netflix docu-series Cocaine Air, out June 11. The main question in the legal proceedings was whether they were supposed to check the contents of the 26 suitcases. In the series, Fauret and Odos defend themselves, saying that they couldn’t possibly have known about the contents of the suitcases, while Christine Saunier Ruellan, who spearheaded the investigation of the case in France, explains what she sees as suspicious activity in the walk-up to the 2013 flight.
Here’s how Cocaine Air presents both sides of the case.
Pilots seen as heroes
Both pilots described the shock of being detained in the Dominican Republic. Odos describes the rollercoaster of emotions he was feeling in the moment: “When you’re innocent, you almost turn yourself in. It’s like a way to say—okay, please help me.”
In France, both pilots were seen as national heroes because they served in the French army, transporting nuclear weapons before moving into commercial aviation. They garnered a lot of support from people who couldn’t imagine that French army veterans would be capable of participating in drug trafficking, and they are seen throughout the series holding up messages of support outside the buildings where legal proceedings took place.
Cocaine Air co-director Jérôme Pierrat explains that the pilots’ defense…
