Abandoned Soviet plane - Umm Al Quwain Airport

Not far from Dubai, just 60 km away, on E11 coastal road towards Ras Al Khaimah Emirate, there is an abandoned airport called  Umm Al Quwain Airport. You wouldn’t even realise that an airport stretches along the road, if and old IL 76 Soviet aircraft indicated otherwise.   

There is only a little known about the aircraft. After tracing its registry, it turned out the IL 76 belonged to the infamous Viktor Bout, a notorious weapon dealer, who was the inspiration for Yuri Orlov character, played by Nicolas Cage in the movie Lord of War. According to several articles, Bout was assumed to operate his illegal businesses from Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah. His planes transported freight and weapons from eastern Europe via the Middle East to Africa. Most probably this is how the IL 76 ended up on this dusty airfield. 

It is said that it landed in 1999, but the reason is unclear until today. There are several anecdotes of its mission: one of them that the landing was unplanned as pilots mistook the small airfield for another. Some say it was a mission: the flight crew received USD 20,000 from  Bout to fly the aircraft to the UAE and abandon. 

Despite of the unknown history of the old IL 76, along with his soviet mate: a rusty AN-2, it remains a rare sight of the desert as it rots under the heating sun.