Sunday, January 13, 2008

Dig the new breed

I keep noticing a new face in the game; Vertir Airlines, of Armenia, founded last year has been flying routes from the UAE into Afghanistan. Not much information has been available, but we know a few things; the only known aircraft, Antonov An-12 EK-12221, serial 7345201, is the old ER-AXE, which flew for the now-banned Aerocom, Viktor Bout and Tomislav Damjanovic's Moldovan airline that had an An-26 seized for cocaine smuggling in Belize, and its brief Australian subsidiary Air Bridge Group. (As a source told this blog - what can they have been moving from South-East Asia to Australia that needed an aircraft with air-drop capability?) More recently it's been with Air Armenia, regulars on the Baghdad and Bagram runs.

Tonight, Vertir flight VRZ981 left Sharjah at 2313 GMT with destination Edinburgh; with a cruise speed of roughly 415mph, and a distance of about 3,620 miles, they should get there about 0800. Interesting, no?

1 comment:

ExpatMom said...

Interesting. Here in Armenia, the impression of Air Armenia is that it mostly gets by doing maintenance and repair work... Armenia is geographically good for that, being a quiet spot midway between Europe/Russia and the Middle East. Lots of underemployed mechanics, no waiting.

But Armenia would also be a good place for doing, um, stuff.


Doug M.

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