Australian authorities arrested and charged a Thai airline flight attendant on suspicion of importing heroin after X‑ray screening at Melbourne Airport detected anomalies in her baggage. The screening, conducted by the Australian Border Force, revealed 12 tote bags concealed with more than one kilogram (over 2 pounds) of heroin, which officials estimated had a street value of about AUD 500,000.

According to khaosodenglish.com, the woman arrived in Melbourne on 25 June on an international flight while performing airline work duties. The Australian Border Force selected the baggage for screening and detected the anomalies via X‑ray, leading to the seizure of the bags and the subsequent arrest and charge of the woman for importing and possessing a marketable quantity of heroin. The individual was identified as a flight attendant for a Thai airline, as reported by gdelt.

On 18 June, a flight attendant in Bangkok received a TikTok message from an unknown account asking if she was flying to Australia and about rates, a detail corroborated across multiple outlets. Drug trafficking groups in Thailand, according to gdelt, target certain travelers, including flight attendants, to help carry drugs to other countries. These groups obtain drugs from nearby countries where they are produced in large amounts and move them through Thailand by hiding them in items such as clothes, coffee packets, and vases. gdelt also reported that Myanmar's opium poppy cultivation reached its highest level in ten years in 2025, that many farmers in Myanmar are turning to illegal drug production due to ongoing conflict and economic problems, and that Myanmar is now the world’s main source of illegal opium, especially as production in Afghanistan has declined.