New York: Passengers wait as all British Airways flights grounded

A British Airways crew who claimed they were mugged in Brazil allegedly spent the whole night drinking, forcing the flight to be cancelled.

The crew was scheduled to fly back to Heathrow Airport in September, but the flight was delayed one day after they claimed they were robbed.

A police investigation has found that they “did not tell the truth and didn’t say what actually happened that morning.”

Police believe the crew members – ages 40, 39, and 31 – lied about the robbery story to avoid getting punished by British Airways, according to reports.

Head of the Special Tourism Support Police (Deat) Patricia Alemany told Brazilian newspaper Globo: “What is surprising is how a crew that has such an important role spends the whole night drinking and using drugs, knowing that the next day they would have the responsibility of taking care of dozens of people who would travel for hours.”

The crew members’ “invented” robbery allegedly happened minutes after they hailed a taxi and were taken to an abandoned gas station in Vaz Lobo.

Police said that actually, the crew members had lost their phones after a night of drinking and concocted the robbery story to cover their tracks.

CCTV footage from the night shows the three crew members out around 4:50am in Rio de Janeiro.

Local media reported the crew had been on an overnight stay in Rio and were due to operate a flight home in Britain the next day.

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According to their story, they were robbed by three men who followed them from Pedra do Sal. They then waited for a cab on the street in Penha, known to be a rough neighborhood.

On their way back to their hotel in Copacabana, they said they were robbed again, and all of their phones were taken.

Another crew member lied about meeting a woman at a bar and claimed his drink was spiked.

Assistant police chief Danielle Bullus said: “They created these stories to try to justify probably inappropriate behavior outside of company rules.”

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Police said the third crew member separated from his colleagues when he drank “to the point of becoming unconscious.”

The man allegedly also had white powder believed to be cocaine, police said.

Once in the hospital, the man reportedly admitted to spending the night drinking and taking drugs with two women.

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