The late US billionaire is feared to have trafficked women to the UK on unscheduled private jets to small airfields to dodge scrutiny – and criminal masterminds have cottoned on
Jeffrey Epstein-style private jet flights to tiny airfields have rocketed – leaving the UK exposed to drugs, sex trafficking, terrorism and hostile state attacks.
The late US billionaire is feared to have trafficked Brit women on up to 90 flights some of which were rooted through small landing strips to dodge border security scrutiny.
Tens of thousands of similar trips involving private jets, light aircraft and helicopters arrive across the UK each year putting the nation’s safety at risk, according to a new report by security thinktank the Royal United Services Institute.
Investigator Cathy Haenlein – who studied non-scheduled flights between the UK, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg – found aircraft had been used to illegally move drugs and people into the country.
Her research discovered up to 538 of the UK’s 3,135 aerodromes, airfields and helipads were approved to accept unscheduled international flights – making universal inspection of aircraft, people and cargo ‘unfeasible’.
In 2025 a total of 77,316 ‘civil non-scheduled’ flights landed in the UK from abroad.
While advance information was reviewed many were not met on arrival.
Compared to the attention trained on small-boat crossings or commercial flights via major airports the report said they represented an underreported vulnerability in UK border security which could easily be exploited by malicious actors such as organised crime gangs.
Crime bids that were rumbled included the seizure of 500kg of cocaine on a private jet at Farnborough Airport and heroin and coke worth £12m from a chopper which stopped off in Kent and Redhill, Surrey.
A small plane dropped packages of cocaine over rural Dorset.
And officials foiled the attempted smuggling of four illegal migrants into Deenethorpe Airfield in Northamptonshire.
High profile investigations – including into Epstein – raised ‘further questions about criminal exploitation of private aviation’, according to the report.
It stated the discretion and flexibility characterising private jet travel could complicate oversight.
Advance passenger information is self-declared and difficult to verify across the UK’s widely dispersed network of airfields.
“Inspecting every flight across this network is neither operationally nor financially feasible,” it said, adding it posed a ‘significant challenge in securing complete physical coverage of the border’.
Though digital pre-flight reporting had been brought in – backed by penalties – security gaps remained.
The report said ‘compliance figures apply only to flights that are met’ and ‘do not eliminate the possibility of false or incomplete declarations, undeclared passengers or other forms of non-compliance’ among flights that are never inspected.
Risks extended beyond organised crime into wider national security including ‘sanctions evasion, illicit finance and hostile-state activity’, the report said.
The UK was also vulnerable to ‘cross-border drone-enabled trafficking’.
The institute said to combat the risks all private jets should be forced to use transponders – signal-emitting devices revealing their locations at all times.
“Improving authorities’ ability to detect, monitor and assess aircraft movements should be a strategic priority. Reducing gaps in aircraft visibility would improve authorities’ ability to identify and respond to emerging threats,” it said.
Britain’s small airport network should have a ‘clearer strategic framework’ to ‘support resource allocation and help identify and address emerging risks proactively’.
The powers of international police force Europol should be strengthened to ‘play a stronger coordinating role, making full use of existing intelligence-sharing mechanisms, improving analytical capability and providing a clearer focal point for cross-border investigations involving general aviation misuse’.
A muli-agency network should be set up to combat criminal drone use.
The report said previous attempts to tighten private jet monitoring had ‘not removed the opportunities that non-scheduled aircraft offer bad actors’.
“Criminal exploitation of general aviation is proven but its scale is not,” it said, adding it was a ‘strategic vulnerability’.
“Without clearer strategic direction a critical part of the UK’s border-security landscape risks remaining an afterthought in wider border security planning.”
US lawyers representing Epstein victims identified the UK as one of the ‘centrepieces’ of his operations.
Three Brit women who were allegedly trafficked appear in Epstein’s records of flights in and out of the UK and other documents related to the convicted sex offender.
Testimony from one helped convict Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex trafficking in the US in 2021.
The woman, given the name ‘Kate’ in the trial, was listed as having been on more than 10 flights paid for by Epstein in and out of the UK between 1999 and 2006.
But lawyers said Brit authorities did not know the details until Kate revealed them.
She told a court how she was 17 when Maxwell befriended her and introduced her to Epstein who then sexually abused her at Ghislaine’s central London home.
The victim said Maxwell gave her a schoolgirl outfit to wear and asked her to find other girls for Epstein.
Her lawyer Brad Edwards said ‘three or four’ of his clients were UK women ‘who were abused on British soil both by Jeffrey Epstein and others’.
Other victims were recruited in the UK, trafficked to the United States and abused there, he said.
US lawyer Sigrid McCawley said Brit authorities had ‘not taken a closer look at those flights, at where he was at, who he was seeing at those moments, and who was with him on those planes, and conducted a full investigation’.
The flight logs were among thousands of documents from court cases and Epstein’s estate which have been made public and reveal details about his time in the UK – including trips to royal residences.
They catalogue 87 flights linked to Epstein arriving or departing from UK airports – 50 involving private jets.
In a number of the logs of Epstein’s private jets, women passengers were identified only as unnamed ‘females’.
Fifteen took place after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor which should have raised questions from immigration officials
Though Epstein died in jail in 2019 – before his trial on charges of trafficking minors for sex – legal experts claimed a UK investigation could have revealed if Brits enabled his crimes.
Sigrid said: “He’s absolutely choosing airports where he feels it will be easier for him to get in and out with victims that he’s trafficking.”