An interesting couple of mystery-jet stories – last week saw an aircraft using a Flying Dolphin/Dolphin Air callsign (ICAO: FDN), the company in Sharjah that took over the assets of Viktor Bout’s Santa Cruz Imperial and that continues to deal with Phoenix Aviation, pass through Dubai en route to Baghdad. Not that unusual, but interestingly…
Read More When you feel the heat you’ve got to move your fleetCommenter Fr8ter says Kuwait has banned Kyrgyz-registered (EX-) aircraft from landing or overflying the country, which is significant becase all flights from the south to Iraq enter Iraqi airspace over Kuwait. But the Dubai and Sharjah airport sites continue to show several flights a day to Baghdad and elsewhere, operated by British Gulf International and…
Read More Bleg to Fr8terWidely reported that, due to the verdict on Saddam, most of Iraq is under an indefinite curfew and the airport is closed. Except for British Gulf International and Click, though. Two flights from Baghdad arrived in Sharjah today. 05-Nov 12:30 Baghdad International Airport British Gulf International Airlines BGK 1234 05-Nov 15:30 Baghdad International Airport Click…
Read More So much for the Iraqi curfewLe Monde reviews a new French book on the arms trade and our friend Viktor. Trafics d’armes : enquête sur les marchands de mort by Laurent Léger. The publisher is Flammarion. Another review here suggests that the author succeeded in interviewing Michel Victor-Thomas, the French aviation identity who co-founded TAN Aviation Network NV in Ostend…
Read More Book alert!Avient Aviation, flying to Baghdad. Flight no. SMJ872, arrived Sharjah ex-Baghdad 0818 local time today.
Read More SurveillanceIt’s time to shake up the embers of Operation Firedump, our effort to monitor compliance with the UNSC asset freeze list on the Viktor Bout companies. Since December, 2005, the original list of aircraft shows a few changes. UN-76497, Ilyushin 76-D. Serial number 43402039. This is probably the aircraft referred to in the UN list…
Read More Firedump: UpdateRemind me not to go back to Dubai if at all possible. It’s what happens when you leave the keys where the postmodernists can get at them, a formless mass of rapid urbanisation running along the coast from the border with Sharjah to beyond the docks at Jebel Ali. “Sprawl” doesn’t describe it, because sprawl…
Read More Brainfuck CitySeveral people have sent me this story from the Times (a newspaper that seems to be improving at the moment, despite being a Murdoch property). It deals with a British-owned airline, Avient, and its extremely dodgy activities in the DR Congo. As well as shifting arms in and diamonds out, Avient went so far as…
Read More Avient and their new marketA useful quick guide to Pat Robertson’s business interests.
Read More Saint BonaventureAssociated Press reports on the arrival of only the second aircraft at Mogadishu since the civil war broke out, allegedly with a cargo of armaments for the new rulers, the Islamic Courts Union, to fight the Ethiopians. There’s a photo, too… The aircraft is a no-title Ilyushin 76 which according to AP was registered in…
Read More Have you seen this aeroplane?