Astonishing photos show Pablo Escobar’s cocaine plane at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea: Drug flight crashed while trying to land on controversial Fyre Festival island

Divers have captured stunning photos of Pablo Escobar’s cocaine plane at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.

The drug plane crashed into the water as it tried to land on Norman’s Cay, the island initially earmarked for the controversial Fyre Festival, in 1980.

The Curtiss C-46 Commando – at the time the largest twin-engine aircraft in the world and capable of carrying large quantities of goods – overshot the runway before finally hitting the seabed.

The island in the Bahamas is now a popular holiday destination, but was historically used by drug lords as an ideal hideout and stopover for cocaine shipments to the US.

Between 1978 and 1982 it served as the headquarters of Carlos Lehder, one of the top agents of Escobar’s Medellin cartel.

The drug plane crashed while trying to land on the controversial Fyre Festival Island

The Curtiss C-46 Commando was the largest twin-engine aircraft in the world at the time and was considered capable of transporting large quantities of goods

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was one of the most notorious criminals in the world in the 20th century

Norman’s Cay was subsequently selected by fraudster Billy McFarland as the setting for his now infamous Fyre Festival.

McFarland leased the island from the current owners, who imposed a strict condition that he would not reference Escobar in any promotional materials for the event.

To build some buzz around the Fyre Festival, a slew of influencers and models were paid to visit the island in December 2016

But when McFarland subsequently announced that the festival would take place on ‘Pablo Escobar’s private island’, the owners immediately canceled their agreement with McFarland.

The festival gained worldwide fame, with two documentaries about the spectacular series of bankruptcies and accidents, which ultimately landed McFarland in prison.

Underwater photographer Ken Kiefer discovered the wreckage of the plane and said: ‘The plane was wrecked during a drug operation for Pablo Escobar.

“It was super cool to see and be with a piece of history that is now also making a home for marine life.”

“My wife Kimber dived around the wreck checking the aircraft and the fish life that had gathered.”

During his time at the helm of the Medellin Cartel, Escobar controlled more than 80 percent of the cocaine shipped to the US, earning him the rank of one of Forbes Magazine’s ten richest people in the world.

The island in the Bahamas is now a popular holiday destination, but was historically used by drug lords as an ideal hideout and stopover for cocaine shipments to the US.

However, the November 1980 flight overshot the runway before finally hitting the seabed

During his time at the helm of the Medellin Cartel, Escobar controlled more than 80 percent of the cocaine shipped to the US, earning him the rank of one of Forbes Magazine’s ten richest people in the world.

Escobar entered the cocaine trade in the early 1970s and teamed up with other criminals to form the Medellin Cartel

By the mid-1980s, Pablo Escobar had an estimated fortune of $30 billion and cash was so widespread that Escobar bought a Learjet for the sole purpose of making his money fly.

To build some buzz around the Fyre Festival, a slew of influencers and models were paid to visit the island in December 2016

Escobar entered the cocaine trade in the early 1970s and teamed up with other criminals to form the Medellin Cartel.

By the mid-1980s, Pablo Escobar had an estimated fortune of $30 billion and cash was so widespread that Escobar bought a Learjet for the sole purpose of making his money fly.

More than 15 tons of cocaine were reportedly smuggled every day, earning the cartel as much as $420 million a week.

For much of his time at the top of the narco heap, Escobar earned popularity by sponsoring charities and football clubs, sharing some of his wealth with local communities and being portrayed as something of a Robin Hood figure.

But Escobar’s henchmen’s terror campaigns resulted in the murder of thousands of people, and slowly but surely began to turn the public against him, as US law enforcement agencies worked with Colombian police to tear down his empire.

Colombian police finally caught up with Escobar on December 2, 1993, in a middle-class neighborhood in Medellin.

A gunfight ensued and as Escobar tried to escape across a series of rooftops, he and his bodyguard were shot and killed.