Almost every year I go on vacation to Spain, not far from the French Spanish border you find the airport of Perpignan, where for years near the highway an Airbus A340 VIP plane was parked. How the A340 ended up here and where it is now tells the story below.
If you drove out of Perpignan in southern France, you couldn’t miss it. Next to pastures, on a deserted strip of the local airport, a 60 meter long A340 was parked for almost ten years. If you looked closely, you could see bullet holes and rocket impacts. The A340 was, in fact, once the private plane of Libyan leader Khadaffi. Rebels captured the plane during the 2011 uprising in Libya – which explains the damage.
It was flown to France for repairs in 2012. But how do you do that with a broken-down plane? Well like this: the Airbus could only fly at extremely low altitudes over the Mediterranean because there was no more cabin pressure due to the many bullet holes. And it was flown with the landing gear down: the wheels could no longer be folded.
After ten years of being stationary in Perpignan, the Airbus unexpectedly took to the skies again last May, plane spotters saw. It turned out to be a test flight to Lyon. It had been tinkered with, some brushes had been applied and the holes had been filled.
Last June the plane took off for good. It now faces a stopover at an airport in Turkey. From there, it will actually return to Libya for the first time. This brings to an end a tumultuous history.
The Airbus A340 was bought in the 1990s by the stone-rich brother of the Sultan of Brunei. According to the trade press, he paid 250 million dollars for it. But in return, the plane was decorated entirely to his personal taste. It is easy to guess what his tastes were. The brother had a reputation as a ‘bad playboy’. He called his private yacht ‘Tits’ and the two supply ships ‘Nipple 1’ and ‘Nipple 2’.
The Libyan dictator got his own plane in 2006. He christened it the “5A-ONE” and went to pick up, among others, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi with it when he was released: one of the terrorists behind the Lockerbie attack.
In 2011, an uprising broke out in Libya. Gaddafi was shot dead. Rebels captured Tripoli’s international airport. And there stood the battered private plane. The rebels went inside and saw, as seen in archival Sky footage, leather silver sofas, TV and music systems, a double bed, luxurious toilets and a fancy bathroom. ”Who would have thought that one day I would be lying in Gadaffi’s bed!” said one of the rebels who, armed with an AK47, showed the press around the plane, according to a reconstruction by the newspaper Libération.
The rebels became the new rulers of Libya. They sent the plane to Perpignan for repairs in 2012. But the tools did not show up. In fact, a company from Kuwait brought proceedings against the new Libyan regime and demanded money. The judge ruled in favor of the company in 2013.
The Kuwaitis immediately sent bailiffs to Perpignan to seize the 5A-ONE. A plan even appeared to auction the aircraft: the asking price would be 62 million euros. But a second judge ruled against the company in 2015: the aircraft was and remained Libyan state property.
So the workmen could finally really get to work. According to the specialized site Africa Intelligence, 14 million euros worth of encryption was carried out on the aircraft in Perpignan.
”We still need to do some minor repairs but the Airbus is back in good condition,” the maintenance company EACS announced last month.
To date, it is unknown how and by whom the refurbished Airbus will be used in Libya. The aircraft is now 25 years old and eats fuel.
The A340 is seen at Berlin Brandenburg Airport for the Libya conference (First governmental use of this plane after several years of storage in France) and London Heathrow last June.
Photo Rob Vogelaar
