Staff of South African Airways tried to warn management of suspicious activities involving flight crew before the recent drug bust in London, but their bosses "just shrugged their shoulders".
The staff's warning was given to management after some of them had been offered huge amounts of money to swop flights with others.
This has been disclosed by the Aerospace Aviation Sector manager of the United Associations of South Africa, which represents SAA staff, Willie van Eeden.
Van Eeden made his disclosures when taking part in SAfm Radio's After Eight Debate on the recent arrests of SAA flight crews in London and the steps now being taken to improve airport security.
He said: "We have evidence our staff were offered huge amounts of money to change rosters to ensure other employees, crew members, got on to aircraft flights."
Van Eeden said this was reported to management. "They just shrugged their shoulders and said it was not their problem. We feel that is serious and should be investigated."
He said this swopping of crew could have been going on for some time. "But they have never offered this amount of money to swop a flight."
There was, he said, a serious lack of trust between cabin crew and their employers, the management of the company.
Van Eeden said his staff were extremely proud of SAA and had been greatly upset by the arrests in London. "This sort of thing had not happened in the past. And suddenly in the past couple of months it has occurred twice."
He said he was pleased to hear that the Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) had now taken over the security checking of SAA flight crews. This had previously been done in the local crew centre by security staff appointed by SAA. "I found it a little strange that you would appoint your own security, saying you can check all people but us as a crew. We are privileged not to be checked."
Acsa's director of operations, Bongani Maseko, said his company's core mandate was to check on the security of the aircraft and its passengers, but it had co-operated with the authorities in the search for drugs.
Maseko said drug smuggling was very common at airports. "At the Johannesburg Airport just in 2008 we had more than 500 incidents of drug smuggling detected, that is about 1.5 incidents a day."
He said some of the drug hauls taken in Johannesburg made the 5kg detected at Heathrow - however distressing - look small. "We had an incident of 132kg of cocaine detected, coming from Brazil."
He said people of many nationalities had been arrested in Johannesburg. "We have had British nationals. We have had Brazilians, Indians, Thais, Portuguese, Kenyans, Ruandans, Russians, Bolivians, all caught at OR Tambo Airport.
"It is internationally accepted that airline crew are targeted by drug dealers to smuggle drugs just because of their ability to handle them."
Maseko said security at all airports had been tightened. "We have started with the practice of sniffer dogs. Unfortunately we do not have enough sniffer dogs, but we have procured equipment that will help us to identify narcotics."
A third panellist, Annette Hubschle, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, said smuggling on air routes was one of the most common forms of drug trafficking. "SAA is not the first airline affected by flight attendants being involved in such activities," she said.
Hubschle believed the information that led to the Heathrow arrests had come from the authorities in South Africa.
See also SAA staffer faces hearing over shift bribe
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