A pilot who tried to smuggle 4 people from Belgium to Britain in a private airplane was jailed for 7 years

• A pilot who tried to use a plane to smuggle four people from Belgium to Britain has been jailed.
• Richard Styles joked with police when he was arrested, saying "I normally get arrested for drugs."

A pilot once jailed for smuggling drugs in a light aircraft has been sentenced again – this time for trying to smuggling people.

Richard Styles, 53, was sentenced to seven years, alongside fellow pilot Silvano Turchet and taxi driver Vijayakumar Sivakumar, for trafficking three men and a woman who were trying to evade immigration checks from Belgium to Britain.

The UK's National Crime Agency said Styles worked with Turchet to rent a six-seater Piper Seneca plane for £1,500 ($1,900).

Investigators believe the men were in contact with an Albanian known as "Tim K," who arranged for Styles to meet his passengers in Belgium. When the plane landed at Deenethorpe Airfield in Northamptonshire, England on March 23 last year, police were waiting.

When Styles was arrested, he joked with authorities, saying: "I normally get arrested for drugs, so it's a bit strange."

He was previously convicted for attempting to smuggle ecstasy from Belgium in 2003, and used a plane to drop cannabis into Jersey in the Channel Islands the same year. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2006, where he met his accomplice Turchet.

Jacque Beer of the National Crime Agency said: "Styles was a career criminal who previously used his piloting skills to move consignments of drugs around Europe. On this occasion he was offering a luxury end-to-end service, bringing people into the UK using a private plane.

"His comments to my officers show that he considered getting arrested nothing more than an occupational hazard."

Turchet was arrested at his home in Nottingham in July 2022 after NCA investigators identified him as the organizer. He eventually pleaded guilty, while Sivakumar was found guilty by a jury after a five-day trial.

Turchet was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, while Sivakumar was sentenced to four and a half years.