Interesting

It was considered sensational when an Airbus A300 belonging to DHL was hit by a surface-to-air missile near Baghdad last year(link, picture), narrowly surviving after the crew succeeded in manoeuvring back to the airport and landing without the hydraulics – they could only control the aircraft by varying the thrust on the engines separately.

It seems, though, that another civilian aircraft survived a SAM hit over Baghdad on the 28th of April. The plane, an Armenian-registered Antonov 12, serial number 8345607, registration EK-12555, leased to Daallo Airlines in Djibouti, suffered flap and aileron damage at around 8000ft altitude on departure but landed safely, being in the words of my source “built like a brick shithouse”. (After all, the type was conceived with two purposes in mind – tactical transport for the military and rough field operations in Siberia.) It would appear that the story was originally hushed up. I thought this might have been a Viktor Bout-related matter, but Daallo are apparently respectable.

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