The Wild World Of Iranian Aircraft Smuggling, “Disappearing” Planes

For years, Iran has faced sanctions from the West, so airlines in the country are unable to buy aircraft directly from Airbus and Boeing. Even beyond that, they can’t acquire planes from many reputable leasing companies, since they’re often subjected to the same restrictions.

Nonetheless, there’s demand for air travel in Iran, so carriers like Iran Air and Mahan Air have to be creative with how they pick up planes. Here’s the latest example of that.

Mahan Air picks up former Singapore Airlines Boeing 777s

Within the past couple of weeks, Iranian airline Mahan Air has taken delivery of a handful of former Singapore Airlines aircraft. As you’d expect, the process by which this happened was anything but straightforward.

This involves five Boeing 777-200s, which are all in the range of 22-24 years old. They initially flew for Singapore Airlines, before flying for NokScoot, a Thai low cost carrier that ceased operations at the start of the pandemic. NokScoot was a joint venture with Singapore Airlines’ low cost carrier, Scoot.

The planes were then put in storage in Alice Springs, Australia (ASP), but they’ve now taken to the skies again. The process by which that happened is quite something. Between September 2023 and February 2024, those five planes were acquired by Ion Aviation, a United States-based company that has a simple website where it describes itself as “your trusted partner for aviation solutions and insights,” offering “expert aviation consulting services.”

During that sale, the planes were registered in the United States, and were given the codes N99001, N99002, N99003, N99004, and N99005.

In recent times, the planes were parked in Lanzhou, China (LHW). Then a couple of weeks ago, the planes flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia (SIA), with some making an extended stop in Jakarta, Indonesia (CGK), presumably for maintenance.

Then on July 15, 2025, the planes essentially flew in a “convoy” from Cambodia, heading northwest. As they flew over Afghanistan, their transponders were suddenly turned off, and the planes reappeared with new registration codes from Madagascar (as one does!). Specifically, they had the registration codes 5R-RIJ, 5R-RIS, 5R-ISA, 5R-IJA, and 5R-HER.

The planes then all landed in Iran, and are now expected to enter service with Mahan Air, Iran’s largest private airline. This is a pretty standard way that airlines in Iran acquire aircraft.

The logistics of aircraft smuggling must be fascinating

The amount of work that goes into smuggling aircraft in this kind of way is quite something, as there are so many parties involved. A few things to note:

• Not all countries have sanctions against Iran, so it’s fair enough that they don’t necessarily take issue with planes being sent there; for example, Cambodia is frequently used as a starting point for these “disappearing” flights
• Legitimate aircraft sale and leasing companies won’t typically do this kind of business, since there’s too much on the line, so you almost always see some unheard of new company pop up, that’s part of one of these deals, and acts as a middleman
• I wonder who the ferry pilots are who perform these flights, and to what extent they’re in on all of this (obviously they know what’s going on)

I don’t want to make any accusations here, but something that’s really eyebrow-raising is how these planes seemingly went from being owned by US-based company, to eventually ending up in Iran. This is the first time I’ve seen the ownership transfer work in that way, so that’s something that makes one wonder, eh? The company is based in Miami, a city full of “entrepreneurs.” 😉

I absolutely love watching Cockpit Casual on YouTube, which is run by the guys behind Nomadic Aviation Group. These are absolute badass ferry pilots, who have built an incredible business. They do everything totally legitimately, and their videos give good insight into the complicated logistics involved.

So when I see what Nomadic deals with trying to ferry planes, it makes me even more curious how complicated these Iranian smuggling journeys are…

Bottom line

Mahan Air has added five Boeing 777s to its fleet, with its typical aircraft acquisition strategy. Some unheard of company picked up these planes, then they flew to a bunch of countries, then the planes disappeared over a country, then they had new registration codes from another country, and then they landed in Iran!

What do you make of this fascinating Iran aircraft smuggling situation?