Juneyao Air Takes Delivery Of Its First A321neo Aircraft.
On November 27th, Shanghai-based airline Juneyao Air finally took delivery of its very first Airbus A321neo. This A321 is unlike most brand-new planes, which don’t come with an interesting backstory. However, this delivery comes after the aircraft spent four months in storage, followed by one month spent stranded in Kazakhstan due to engine issues. Yesterday’s flight from Tianjin to Shanghai means the jet is finally at its new home.
The delivery flight
While it looks like FlightRadar24.com, at the time of publication, is missing details of the delivery flight from Tianjin, data from AIB Family Flights shows that the A321neo’s delivery flight took place on November 27th. The aircraft, registered as B-30EQ, departed Tianjin Binhai International Airport (TSN) on November 27th at 14:48 UTC. Without the actual flight data available, we do know that regularly scheduled passenger flights from Tianjin to Shanghai take about two hours and 10 minutes.
While this delivery flight would usually be the only flight data reported when writing about a ‘first delivery,’ B-30EQ has a special story – having spent mid-October to mid-November stranded in Kazakhstan.
Before reaching China
It’s already been a long journey for the A321neo. The aircraft, with test registration D-AVYW, was assembled and completed at Airbus’ Hamburg Finkenwerder facility all the way back in July of 2020. However, due to the catastrophic events of 2020, Juneyao saw no need to take the aircraft at the time. Instead, the jet was sent into storage at Erfurt Airport.
This is what Airport Spotting had to say about the Erfurt Airport and its 2020 activities:
“Erfurt-Weimar airport in eastern Germany is a quiet, regional airport which usually sees a mix of general aviation traffic, and summer holiday charter flights…However, thanks to the need to store airliners, Erfurt’s parking aprons have become home to some unusual visitors…They are all brand new A320 family aircraft, awaiting delivery to customers mostly in China. Carriers include Air China, Capital Airlines, China Eastern, China Southern, and Juneyao Air, plus AirAsia and Saudi Gulf Airlines.”
Problems over Kazakhstan
The A321neo was stored at Erfurt from July 16th to October 6th. After this, the jet returned to Hamburg Finkenwerder to be spruced up for the customer, departing Germany for China on October 15th.
However, the jet experienced engine issues on the October 15th flight and diverted to Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan that day. It spent a month there, listed as ‘stranded‘ because of these engine issues.
After a test flight around Nur-Sultan and Karagandy, Kazakhstan on November 14th, the jet finally flew to Tianjin the next day. It is in Tianjin that Airbus has an A320 final assembly plant and an A330 Completion and Delivery Center. The latter was opened in 2016.
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