Aerocom

Aerocom is an airline based in Chişinău, Moldova. It was formed in 1998 and operates passenger and cargo charter services. Its main base is Chişinău International AirportFlight International 27 March 2007] .

The airline's air operator licence expired in 2004 and has not been renewed.

Code Data

*ICAO Code: MCC [ [http://www.airlinecodes.co.uk/ Airline Codes] ]

History

In 2004 the United Kingdom Department for Overseas Development came under fire for hiring an airline involved in the international arms trade to fly aid missions, despite being warned that airline had been named as a sanctions buster by the United Nations. Official documents reveal that the department hired Aerocom, to fly aid to Morocco following the 2004 earthquake there. Aerocom was named in a United Nations report in 2003 for breaking international sanctions by transporting huge quantities of arms to Liberia in 2002. Special permission from the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority was needed to allow Aerocom's Moldova-registered Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft to land in Britain, including an exemption from noise restrictions, the plane loaded humanitarian supplies at Manston Airport in Kent, and took off on 1 March 2004. The government had been warned about Aerocom when the HALO Trust, a respected British mine clearance charity, inadvertently hired the airline to fly equipment to Angola in March 2003. Concerns about the alleged record of Aerocom led the trust to seek Foreign and Commonwealth Office advice. The FCO gave no hint the flight should not proceed [ [http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1232626,00.html The Observer] 6 June 2004] .

In 2004 Aerocom flew a cargo of arms out of a United States air base at Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina while operating without a license. Aerocom, named in a 2003 UN investigation of the diamonds-for-guns trade in Liberia and Sierra Leone, is now defunct, but its assets and aircraft are registered with another Moldovan company, Jet Line International. It was later reported that Aerocom was stripped of its license by its national authorities a day before the first shipment. According to Washington Post reporter Doug Farah, Aerocom shared an address and telephone number in Moldova with Jetline, a company publicly named as a Viktor Bout (noted arms smuggler, blacklisted by Washington and the United Nations) company by then senior Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz. When the first Aerocom flights were made in August 2004, the airline had lost its air-operating certificate, issued by Moldova. The certificate expired on August 6, 2004, before the flights and has not been renewed [ [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HG27Aa01.html Asia Times online] 27 July 2006] .

Fleet

The Aerocom fleet consists of the following aircraft (at March 2007) :

*1 Antonov An-12
*3 Antonov An-24RV
*1 Antonov An-26

Previously operated

As of January 2005: Fact|date=April 2007
*1 Ilyushin Il-76MD
*1 Ilyushin Il-76T

External links

* [http://www.ruudleeuw.com/vbout22.htm Connected: Aerocom, Jet Line and Air Mero]
* [http://www.douglasfarah.com/archive/2006_05_01_archive.shtml Doug Farah on Aerocom]

References