Air Lease Corporation Announces Lease Placement of Two Airbus A330-200 Aircraft with Nordwind Airlines

Air Lease Corporation announced long-term lease placements for two used Airbus A330-200 aircraft with Nordwind Airlines. Previously on long-term lease from ALC to Vietnam Airlines, these aircraft will deliver to Moscow-based Nordwind Airlines in the Spring.

“ALC is pleased to announce this A330-200 lease placement with our long-time customer, Nordwind Airlines,” said Steven F. Udvar-Házy, Executive Chairman of Air Lease Corporation. “These two A330-200s will complement Nordwind’s current fleet operations on the airline’s long-haul network to Southeast Asia, Africa, Turkey and the Caribbean.”

On lease from ALC to Vietnam Airlines since 2011, these two used A330-200s were replaced with two new Boeing 787-10 aircraft delivered to Vietnam Airlines from ALC’s order book with Boeing in the past few weeks.

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Nordwind Airlines Airbus badly damaged in heavy landing in Turkey

A Nordwind Airlines A321-200 registration VQ-BRS was travelling from Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport on Friday to Antalya Airport suffered serious damage during a hard-landing incident. 

The crew made a stable approach, however, according to the pilot 'wind shear' caused a hard landing and the pilot then elected to do a go-around.

The aircraft, delivered to the airline in May 2017, developed issues with instrumentation and then the crew reported smoke in the cockpit.  According to a pilot report, the crew put on oxygen masks redeclared a mayday and carried out a low fly-over for air traffic controllers could ascertain any damage to the aircraft's landing gear. More technical and systems issues occurred before the crew were able to make an emergency landing on  Antalya's runway 36c.

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Russia's Nordwind Airlines has long-haul 60 min ETOPS permit withdrawn over safety issues.

Boeing 737 of Nordwind Airlines          Photo Nordwind 

On Monday 25th March, the Russian aviation regulator, the Federal Air Transport Agency restricted  Nordwind Airlines certification to fly certain routes.  Specifically, the regulators cancelled the airline's special permits for the operation of flights using the ETOPS rules (extended flight time to the alternate aerodrome over 60 minutes) and applies to the whole of the airlines fleet of aircraft.

The commission said it was removing the certificates for safety-related issues, which included pilot training discrepancies for ETOPS operations, a lack of technical staff at the carrier and maintenance not being carried out completely on aircraft. The issues were found during an unannounced and unscheduled inspection at the airlines base back in February of this year.  The regulator also advised that the restriction was not related to the financial and economic state of the company and is aimed at improving the level of flight safety on Nordwinds fleet.