Dodgy Malawi airline buys four ex Thai A340-600s from a Chinese company
A Malawi based airline operating under the nane Rayoni Tourism Airline and registered as Flytech Aviation Group purchased four ex Thai Airways Airbus A340-600 aircraft. Extremely likely these aircraft will be flown to Iran to be operated by likely Mahan Air. These aircraft could also go to Venezuela via Iran.
Update October 29, 2025: Two of the purchased A340-600 were seen in an all white livery with registrations 7Q-YAQ and 7Q-YAP.
Update: November 3, 2025: someone on X writes there are six A340-600s with Malawi registration,
The previous owner was a Chinese firm named Hua An Aviation Parts.
The aircraft are already registered in the Malawi register. These are ex 2-STNA, 2-STNB, 2-STNE, 2-STNF. All currently stored at Taiyuan in China.
The registration in the Guernsey register was quite short. For example 2-STNA was listed in the January and February 2024 reports but not anymore in the March 2024 report.
2-STNE was registered in June 2024. It disappeared from the Guernsey register in August 2024.
So the Guernsey registration were only used to ferry the aircraft from their storage location in Thailand to China.
The manager of the airline told ch-aviation earlier the airline had plans to operate two E145s, two Beech 1900 and four Cessna Caravans.
Flytech leased a DC-9 to Somali based Aerojet.
The purchase of four A340 does not make any sense if the company wants to lease the aircraft or operate these.
Very likely Malawi is used by Iran to fly aircraft to Iran.
These are the aircraft currenty wearing a 7Q registration
| 7Q-YAY | ex HS-TLD | MSN 775 |
| 7Q-YA? | ex HS-TLB | MSN 628 |
| 7Q-YAP | ex HS-TNE | MSN 719 Seen all white Taiyaun (photo) |
| 7Q-YAQ | ex HS-TNA | MSN 677 Seen all white Taiyaun (photo) |
| 7Q-YAT | ex HS-TNF | MSN 953 |
| 7Q-YA? | ex HS-TNB | MSN 681 |
