Sanctioned Iranian airline received a ‘new’ Boeing 737-300 which departed Serbia
A Boeing 737-300 which had a flightplan Belgrade-Tashkent (Uzbekistan) diverted to Shiraz International Airport, Iran on December 23, 2022 . The flightplan listed EP-DRV as registration, used SHI7135 as callsign (Sepehran Airlines) and was using hex code 731256. This hex code is assigned to Iran but was not spotted earlier.
This is an illegal delivery of an aircraft to Iran. In many cases flightplans are filed and then the aircraft declares an emergency and diverts to an Iranian airport. A bit later the aircraft is added to the fleet of an Iranian airline.
Air Serbia at Belgrade airport did the maintenance of this aircraft. The origin is not clear yet. It could be a former Air Serbia or Aviolet B737-300 which are stored at Belgrade. Another candidate is 5N-BQU which is at BEG since 20 May 2022. This aircraft was owned by Air Peace.