news

"She was hiding her face." Passengers describe Schapelle Corby's long-awaited flight home.

It’s been a tumultuous 24 hours for 39-year-old Schapelle Corby, who is now a free woman after serving over 12 years in Bali for smuggling more than 4kg of marijuana in a boogie board bag in 2004.

She is yet to speak to the press, but passengers on her flight home have described her long-awaited journey from Bali to Brisbane.

“She was ready to leave. She was hiding her face and looked very nervous,” one passenger told ABC.

Corby was originally booked onto a Virgin flight, before changing to a Malindo Air flight at the last minute. “She was snuck on last up the front. We didn’t get to see anything about her. They warned us not to use our phones or do videos,” said one passenger.

Another person said, “We were told they blocked every business class seat in Virgin as well, which delayed their flight. Friends of mine were really annoyed, because they were delayed as well. They kept paging her over the speakers for her on that flight, and she was never on that flight”.

Boarded

A post shared by Schapellecorby (@schapelle.corby) on

ADVERTISEMENT

Upon landing, one passenger told ABC, “They said that the special guest had to get off first. They blocked everyone from business class. A few people were annoyed about that, because they blocked the toilets as well – so people who wanted to go to the bathroom had to wait”.

Gabrielle Amies, however, told Fairfax that Corby was in high spirits during her flight. “No-one spoke to her, she had a security guard on board with her,” she said. “She was happy, she was laughing. Unless you knew who it was, you’d have thought it was just a normal passenger”.

“They were just acting like normal passengers. They slept, they ate, she kept her head down a little bit, but otherwise no-one would have really known who she was.”

With AAP.