На русском языке:
Из Литвы в Иран перегнали два пассажирских Airbus A340?
MotolkoHelp has previously written several times about the ‘hard’ fate of the Iranian aviation industry, which is ‘forced’ to collect aircraft from around the world to fill the sanctions hunger. We drew attention to this when it was about Belarus:
- In March 2022, two Airbus A320-212 flew from Minsk to Tehran;
- In January 2023, another Airbus A320-212 was transferred from Minsk to Tehran;
- In February 2024, an Airbus A320-200 aircraft was transported through Minsk to Syria through a network of fake firms-owners (including those with Kyrgyz traces), but this is a different story.
We recall that there are many more cases when Iran purchases passenger aircraft from around the world to circumvent sanctions imposed on it. At the end of 2022, German media wrote that Iran purchased four Airbus 340 aircraft that previously belonged to Turkish Airlines and were officially supposed to be transferred to Uzbekistan, but landed in Tehran. A similar case occured in 2023 with the purchase of two Airbus A340 previously operated by the French Air Force.
All such ‘purchases’ follow the same chain of events. Companies specializing in the resale of aircraft to dubious or sanctioned jurisdictions find ‘ownerless’ models of aircraft in storage that the customer is interested in, re-register them several times from one company (and country) to another, prepare documents for departure and removal from storage, and then the aircraft suddenly appears in Iran.
Probably on February 29, 2024, it was Lithuania’s turn in a similar scheme.
Three Airbus A340 appeared in the parking lot of Siauliai Airport (next to the city of the same name and NATO Air Force base) in spring 2022. At the time of their transfer to Lithuania, the aircraft were assigned Gambian registration numbers:
The owner of the parked aircraft at the time was considered to be Macka Invest Company, a leasing company.
Airbus A340 (reg.number C5-MIC) in Siauliai, 05.06.2023 / jetphotos.com
Almost two years later, according to public sources as of 29.02.2024, the owners of the two aircraft with numbers C5-MIA and C5-MIC filed a flight plan for the route Siauliai (SQQ / EYSA, Lithuania) — Clark (CRK / RPLC, Philippines), according to other data Siauliai (SQQ / EYSA, Lithuania) — Colombo (CMB / VCBI, Sri Lanka).
4 Airbus A340 in the parking lot of Siauliai Airport, 27.08.2022: the 'long' A340-600 (C5-MIB&C5-MIC) and one of the shorter ones – A340-300 / The number of the 4th is unknown / maps.google.com
On the same day, the first C5-MIC aircraft departed from Siauliai at 14:08 UTC+02, with the second C5-MIA departing at 14:22 UTC+02.
C5-MIA and C5-MIC over Iran, 29.02.2024 / fr24.com and planespotters.net
Then, after 17:00 UTC, both aircraft ‘disappeared’ over the territory of Iran: one near Tehran, the other near the city of Chabahar in southern Iran.
There is reason to believe that the two aircraft landed in Iran without reaching their planned destinations, as it has happened before.
Airbus A340 (reg.number C5-MIA) in Siauliai, 2022 / jetphotos.com
Thus, we should expect that in the coming months the aircraft mentioned above will fly again with the registration numbers of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Could the Lithuanian aviation authorities have known about this before the flight? Most likely not. As noted above, the owner of the aircraft had agreed on a completely different destination point, but it turned out that the route was successfully established through Iran’s airspace.
Airbus A340 (reg. number C5-MIB) in Siauliai, 21.09.2022 / jetphotos.com
Another thing is that there is still another A340-600 with reg. number C5-MIB registered to the same company in Siauliai. And the regulator interested in sanctions compliance will have a chance to check the upcoming flight more closely.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that Belarusians have anything to do with these aircraft. And the owner of the aircraft must have been paying for their parking all these years, and now has cleared the places for other clients.
