Two Boeing 747s that belong to Iraqi Airways and were urgently evacuated from Baghdad at the imminent start of the Second Gulf War will be auctioned off, thus ending more than three decades of storage.
Both aircraft have been since 1990 at the Tozeur-Nefta International Airport in Tunisia, where the government of Saddam Hussein decided to send them to prevent them from being damaged by bombings.
One is a Boeing 747-200C (combi version) with registration YI-AGP, and the other is a Boeing 747 SP with registration YI-ALM, with the latter having served as a government aircraft for the Hussein regime.
According to a report from FlightGlobal, Iraqi Airways intends to get $494,900 for each 747, although this will ultimately be decided by the market when the auction takes place on August 16, 2023.
With the rise of the oil industry in the second half of the 20th century and the establishment of the Ba’ath regime, Iraqi Airways embarked on a period of growth that led it to receive its first two Boeing 747-200Cs in 1976. This was followed by a third in 1982, one of which will be auctioned, while in 1982 the Boeing 747SP YI-ALM arrived in Iraq to be used as VIP government transport.
After the Second Gulf War, the operations of Iraqi Airways were reduced to a bare minimum, and it was only after the invasion of allied troops in 2003 that the company began to regain strength, having started to fly in October 2003 between Baghdad and Amman, in Jordan.
Already in the second decade of the 2000s, Iraqi Airways embarked on a new phase of fleet modernization adding Airbus A320, A321, A330, Boeing 737-800, 737 MAX, 777 and 787 aircraft. In December 2022, it also became a new operator of the Airbus A220 family, of which it already owns five aircraft. It also operated two Boeing 747-400s until 2022.
Despite this, Iraqi Airways is still prohibited from operating its aircraft in the airspace of the European Union due to safety violations. In July, a delegation from the European Union visited Baghdad airport to meet with officials from the ICAA (Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority) and negotiate the lifting of the measure in place since 2015, and while the meeting was announced as positive, there have been no updates so far.
