The mystery of 3 abandoned jumbo jets at KLIA as no one claims ownership

Speculation over three Boeing 747-200Fs abandoned at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport has heated up since Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) placed advertisements in local news dailies earlier this week asking the rightful owners to claim them.

The newspaper advert features a photo of each plane and asks the owner or owners to call Malaysian Airports.

"If you fail to collect the aircraft within 14 days of the date of this notice, we reserve the right to sell or otherwise dispose of the aircraft," the ad states.

The initial trail pointed to Air Atlanta Icelandic after online aviation sleuths managed to uncover the fact that MASKargo had leased two of the planes from the company based in Kópavogur, Iceland.

That trail turned cold quickly when the company publicly stated that it had returned the planes to the owner 5 years ago.

"The aircraft bearing the registration mark TF-ARM, TF-ARN, TF-ARH, which are currently parked in Malaysia, were operated by Air Atlanta Icelandic until 2010 when they were returned to its owner.

"Air Atlanta Icelandic does not have any knowledge of who the current owner of these aircraft is today, and has nothing to do with these aircraft today," an Air Atlanta Icelandic spokesman said, as reported by a local English news daily.

Yesterday, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has also issued a statement denying owning any of the aircraft.

"If it was ours, we would have claimed it," a MAS media relations officer said.

Malaysia Airports Holding Berhad managing director Datuk Badlisham Ghazali said it was following industry procedures to place classified notices in newspapers after failing to trace the owners of the three commercial planes despite having their registration numbers, Bernama reports.

The owner might just be found given that the story has gone international with CNN headlining the story by asking "Don't you hate it when you forget where you left your Boeing 747-200F?" and the Daily Mail reported with the headline,"Are these your jumbo jets?".

Whoever the mystery owner turns out to be, they should make their claim before December 21 but will likely be slapped with a hefty fee for landing, parking and other charges running to hundreds of thousand of ringgit, according to media reports.

Aviation experts have also speculated online that if the planes are dismantled and sold for scrap, the value of the parts could fetch up to US$10 million per plane.

The original price tag for the 30-year-old second generation Boeing 747-200 jumbo jet model with seating capacity of 450 passengers would have been around RM100 million.

- mD