2023-12-22 17:05:56

A Boeing took off in Ukraine, flew over the country to land on the border between France and Spain. This December 19 is the first takeoff of the plane since Ukrainian airspace was closed to civilian aircraft for security reasons. The plane had not taken off since the outbreak of war on February 24, 2022, and miraculously managed to escape unscathed despite the bombings and gunfights.

The silent takeoff

The company using the machine and the tracking sites information is also confirmed. The Boeing 777-300 with the registration number Ur-Azr is owned by AerCap, the world’s leading aircraft leasing company, but was used by the Ukrainian airline Skyline Express (albeit under the name Azur Air). It took off from the capital Boryspil Airport around 9:00 a.m. local time, without passengers or cargo. They did not even use the help of Ukrainian air traffic controllers for the procedure, since the action was secret.

To the Romanian border, the two-aisle plane – which is usually used for intercontinental journeys – flew with its beacons turned off, so as not to become a target for the Russians or the Ukrainians by mistake, and also at a very low altitude, around 3,700 meters. The pilots only turned on the systems at 10:21 local time, as soon as they crossed the Romanian border. At that time, the Boeing was traveling at a speed of 740 kilometers per hour and then rose to cruising altitude. The route was authorized directly by Eurocontrol, the European agency that oversees the continent’s skies.

The Ukrainian plane landed at 11:55 a.m. at Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrenees Airport in France, where one of the main aircraft parking lots is located. According to Ch-Aviation, the market value of the said Boeing is nearly 36 million dollars. From Kyiv-Boryspil Airport, at the request of the Skyline Express operator, the so-called a technical trip was carried out, the Ukrainian facility management company confirmed on Facebook.

With the flight on December 19, the number of commercial aircraft that have flown out of Ukraine since the beginning of the war has risen to five. The first was the Atr-72 of the Windrose airline, which took off from Lviv in April 2022. Then it was the turn of an Airbus A320 of the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air in September 2022. Then Sky Up will be a Boeing 737 in April 2023, and SmartLynx will be an Airbus A330 in June. But dozens of planes still need to get out of Ukrainian airports safely.

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