Two Airbus A340s belonging to Gambia’s leasing company Macka Invest Company, which were due to fly from Siauliai to Sri Lanka and the Philippines in late February, ended up in Iran, the vz.kt business news website reports on Thursday.
Their transponders were switched off once they entered Iran. Shortly afterwards, the aviation data platform ch-aviation reported on its website that one aircraft landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport and the other landed at the Konarak airport in Chabahar in the south of the country.
A few days later, Flightaware’s aircraft tracking website reported that one of the planes was at Kabul airport in Afghanistan, and then ch-aviation’s database reported that it was back in Iran.
According to vz.lt, Mahan Air, an aviation company operating in Iran, this way got two of its aircraft in circumvention of the existing US sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program.
A third aircraft belonging to Macka Invest Company remained in Siauliai, but according to Aurelija Kuezada, director of Siauliai Airport, it was not allowed to take off because of the spare parts it carried.
“The plane was due to fly to the Philippines, but we assume that it could have landed in Iran as well. And nothing could have prevented that. So we just didn’t let it go when we found out that the first plane had landed in Iran,” Kuezada said.
Oro Navigacija, Lithuania’s state-owned navigation service provider, told the website that the three planes did not raise any suspicions and their movement outside Lithuanian airspace was whitin the competence of air navigation service providers in other countries, so the Lithuanian air transport administrator no longer had any influence.
Source: BNS
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