An Aeroflot Airbus A321 has sat abandoned at Geneva Airport since February 2022, with full fuel tanks and rotting food onboard, as Swiss sanctions block its return to Russia.
I wonder why they bother to pay the parking fees. What would they do if they stopped? Seize the unusable plane?
The article you are citing doesn’t say that the parking fees have been paid. It says that those fees are mounting up an that it is unclear, if they are being paid.
I very much doubt that they’re being paid.
@ CapitalMike -- The previous story states that they have been paid as of recently, though it's not clear if they've been paid consistently, or what:
https://www.aerotelegraph.com/flugzeuge/aeroflot-airbus-vergammelt-seit-45-jahren-in-genf-essen-noch-an-bord/66zk1gh
At Brussels airport there were two (I think 737) from Equatorial Congo stuck for 5 or more years which had a rat infection as well. They were scrapped eventually. Crazy
It was a single 757-200 but remained at BRU for nearly 8 years. I remember that you could easily see it from the road in Steenokkerzeel. A bit surreal!
https://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/nieuws/categorie/3/airports/na-acht-jaar-stilstand-laat-brussels-airport-boeing-757-ontmantelen
An allegory for Russia. Also rotting to the core, drowning in military incompetence, cultural hubris, corruption, and an inability to find its place in the world.
May that wretched country collapse one day and soon and cease to be a menace to the rest of the world.
In a related story, there’s that massive Antonov An-124 still parked prominently at Pearson (YYZ)… Canada officially seized the plane in June 2023, over the owners’ “complicity in President Putin’s war of choice.” Ottawa has previously said it plans to redistribute the aircraft to Ukraine. Nice.