На русском языке:
«Из Минска в Тегеран»: Иран нелегально купил ещё один самолёт, который перевезли через Беларусь
На беларускай мове:
«З Мінска ў Тэгеран»: Іран нелегальна купіў яшчэ адзін самалёт, які перавезлі праз Беларусь
In March 2022, we wrote that two Airbus A320-212 aircraft, which had been stored in Minsk for almost a year and had previously belonged to the German airline Condor, were sold to Iran circumventing sanctions. And this case is not the only one. During 2022, Iran has been actively buying passenger aircraft through third countries, for example, through Serbia and Belarus.
This practice continued in the new year. For example, on December 20, Boeing 737-300 with registration number EX-37021, which belonged to the Kyrgyz airline Avia Traffic Company, arrived in Minsk. It flew to the Minsk Civil Aviation Plant. Apparently, they decided to test it additionally before selling it.
And already on January 5, 2023, the aircraft received a new registration number EP-PPB, which you can check in open sources. The letters EP are an additional confirmation of the sale of the aircraft to Iran, as they indicate the ICAO code of this country.
Boeing 737-300 with the new registration number EP-PPB
On the same day, January 5, the aircraft with the new registration number took off from Minsk National Airport and flew from Belarus to Iran on the flight SPN8344, which corresponds to the code SPN of the Iranian airline HESA Airlines.
code SPN of the Iranian airline HESA Airlines
In the evening, it landed at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran.
Boeing 737-300 (EP-PPB) flying from Minsk to Tehran
We should note that there are many more cases of Iran purchasing passenger aircraft circumventing sanctions imposed against it. For example, at the end of 2022, German media wrote that Iran had purchased four Airbus 340, which previously belonged to Turkish Airlines and were officially supposed to be transferred to Uzbekistan, but landed in Tehran.
