The five-year-old A350-900 Airbus flying to Brazil could be for Azul Brazilian Airlines. It has been living at Tarmac Aerosave, HSH, since leaving the Hong Kong Airlines fleet about two and a half years ago. As per Airbus’s August order bookings, Azul Brazilian Airlines has four A350-900s, but ironically none are flying for Azul airlines.
Lately, airlines have been indulging in showing interest in old aircraft. Only last month, Lufthansa Airlines took delivery of its first spanking new Boeing 787, a three-year-old aircraft. And Azul Brazilian Airlines is set to join the league by showing love to hands-me-down Airbus A 350-900 aircraft, a new addition to its current fleet, which is on the way to Brazil.
En Route Brazil
At 11:38, as per local timings, A350-900 took off the Tabes Airport, France. This facility is in the south of France and is the aircraft storage and distribution facility. As per the information accumulated from FlightRadar24.com, the Airbus A350-900 is heading towards Belo Horizonte, one of the largest Brazilian cities and a center for Azul Airlines.
The aircraft expects to arrive at the destination spot, at 16:44, after a long haul 10-hour long flight. The aircraft will join other members of the Azul fleet at the airline hub.
Interestingly, as per the airline’s transponder, A350-900 is flying as F-ZACG, in association with Beechcraft 350. Though due to a wrongly set transponder, the aircraft’s flight number provided is FWTAO. According to the information from ch-aviation.com, it is one of the registration of the Airbus A350 joining Azul Airline.
If it’s an F-WTAO aircraft, it is possibly currently at the age of 4.9 years. And airbus was earlier with Hong Kong airlines since 29th November 2017. Hong Kong Airlines deployed the airbus A350-900 services till 7th February 2020, under B-LGC registration. After that, it was on the Tarmac Aerosave, HSH, as discussed above.
As the airline spent quite a time in the storage facility, it has less time for service. It has already attained 9463 flight hours which equates to 1.08-year flying. As per Collateral Verications LLC estimations, the Airbus A350-900 currently values at $98.22 million and a market lease rate of $750 thousand. The data from FlightRadar24.com shows that the aircraft took off to Abu Dhabi in August.
Airbus A350 at Azul Airline
Azul Airlines has leased five Airbus A350s from ILFC(International Lease Finance Corporation). The deliveries for the international flight began in 2017. Though due to the bad Brazilian financial situation, they delayed taking up the aircraft. And later, the Covid pandemic hit the world demand has been slow.
