What on earth? Dolphin Air, (ICAO: FDN), the company formed from the assets of Santa Cruz Imperial, has a flight leaving Sharjah at 1600GMT for the United States – specifically Decatur, Illinois. Flight number is FDN 1457.
As far as I know the only aircraft left on the FDN register is an old 737-2X5, which has a range of 1800 nautical miles at the outside. That implies many stops; I reckon 17-18 hours and four or five sectors, either going north via Scotland/Iceland/Newfoundland or south via somewhere in the western Mediterranean, the Azores, and Gander, Newfoundland. Decatur is GMT-6; so STD is 1000A. +18 hours – about 0400 local time tomorrow.
Update: Rechecked – the aircraft left well ahead of schedule at 1134GMT…so ETA 0030 local/0630Z!
Update Update: A comment informs us that, like another Dolphin Air 737, it’s been sold to Air Inuit of Canada. Checking, it looks like it was probably A6-ZYA, serial number 21926, formerly of Trans Air Congo…
Nothing unusual to ferry an aircraft back to the USA for storage or return to lessor. A boeing 737-200 A6-ZYB, also formerly of Dolphin Air was ferried to Canada to join the Air Inuit fleet.