APRIL 2023

April has been a very quiet month on the local aviation marketplace with only nine new registration allocations and three deletions, according to the officially-supplied register review.

- MORNE BOOIJ-LIEWES

REGULAR READERS of this column will by now be familiar with quite a few corporate jets that I have recently mentioned that are either registered in South Africa and operated in Russia or that are briefly registered on the ZS-register to "sanitise" their onward sale to Russian owners under western sanctions.

So this month I would like to start with a topical deletion from the South African register of a Embraer Legacy 650 corporate jet, ZS-ABB (14501210), as this also ties in with a newly-registered Bombardier Global Express 6000, ZS-BLA (9718) that my attention was drawn to by one of my contacts in the industry. This particular Legacy 650 was the subject of an article in the local press by the well-known aviation and defence investigative journalist, Erika Gibson, that traced its journey from Basel to Moscow on 27 August 2022, where it has been resident ever since. The jet's ZS-registration was finally cancelled on 28 March as "sold to Turkey". I am prepared to bet it is now on the Russian registry if it follows the pattern of the recent register-hopping by some corporate jets.