На русском языке:
Бывший самолёт «Белавиа» улетел в Иран: Продан за $1,9 млн.
На беларускай мове:
Былы самалёт «Белавіі» паляцеў у Іран: прададзены за $1,9 млн
In December 2024, we noticed a plane sold to an Iranian airline that returned to Minsk due to technical problems.
At the time, we mistakenly assumed that it was one of the three Airbus A330-200 that have been in storage in Minsk for the last six months awaiting their fate.
On January 3, 2025, this same plane made a second attempt to leave Belarus. The plane departed from Minsk National Airport at 15:38 and successfully landed in the capital of Iran at 20:25 with the same call sign IRT2801 from December (IRT is the ICAO code of Iranian Toos Airlines). At the same time its new tail number became known – EP-MFA (the letters EP also indicate Iran).
Flight of EP-MFA from Minsk to Tehran, 03.01.2025 / FR24
A few days later, a photo of this plane at Tehran airport appeared.
EP-MFA at Tehran airport / planespotters.net
And everything fell into place. The plane, previously owned by Belavia (tail number EW-290PA), which was sold at auction in 2023 to the «sole bidder» for $1.9 million at the then exchange rate, flew to Iran.
Auction for the sale of Belavia plane / ipmtorgi.by
This plane was Belavia’s last Boeing of the 737-500 model.
According to open sources, the serial number of the new Iranian plane and the former Belavia plane match, clearly indicating that they are the same plane.
skyliner-aviation.de
MotolkoHelp has previously reported several times about the fate of the Iranian aviation industry, «forced» to collect planes around the world. We mainly drew attention to it when it directly concerned Belarus.
This is the second recorded case when Belavia sends its planes to Iran. Another Boeing 737-500 was auctioned there in 2021.
This is the exchange between sanctioned airlines, so that even Belavia, which lacks planes and spare parts for them, has to sell its worn-out aircraft to those countries where the sanctions hunger is less fastidious to the quality of «aviation products.»
