And what about Air Bas?

Another of those fuel contracts was signed with Air Bas Transportation, UAE. The only address given is a Sharjah PO box number (8299), and the billing details are the same. Oddly enough, the DODAAC contract is number TBTC02. The British Gulf one is TBTC03! Now, the best known Bout airline, Air Cess, was made to disappear during 2001, no doubt in order to conceal the ownership of its assets. Many of its activities continued under the new title Air Bas. In fact, most of its fleet were stripped of their (minimal) markings and re-registered to get them off the Kazakh registry, before they re-appeared in Air Bas titles and new regs. Especially interesting is the history of an An-12, serial no. 9346509 that worked for Cess under the Kazakh registration UN-11007, and was also registered to “GST AeroCompany” under the same reg. It then re-appeared as an Air Bas-er registered 3C-00Z. The significance is that, although BGIA is a recent development, Bas has never been anything other than “Stadtbekannt” or “known to the city” as a sheister outfit. This defeats any claim of ignorance.

It will come as no surprise that they are also connected with British Gulf. And – as a starter for 10 – I wonder who Sky Traffic Facilitators of Sharjah, contract no. TBTC01, are? They appear to be a charter broker based in Sharjah. And the contact given for them by Air Cargo World is one Kirill Pilgorov. Strange, given that Kirill is better known as a Russian movie star.