Ilyushin Il-76s at Liverpool
Metro Cargo Il-76TD LZ-INK visited in October 1990
Along with many other British airports, the IL-76 freighter was a fairly regular visitor to Liverpool in the period 1990 to 2000 - before the type was banned from EU countries due to noise regulations. It is not impossible that future visits will occur though as a re-engining programme now appears to be underway at last.
1990 On 11th October Metro Cargo's Il-76TD LZ-INK operated f&t Valencia with Ford's freight as IBE8042/7076.
1992 CCCP-76758 of Volgar Dnepr in association with Heavylift arrived on 9th September Saarbrucken-Stansted as HLA732/3 with Ford's freight inbound.
1993 RA-76522 of Inversia Cargo routed Riga-Skopje on 17th April as MGD2653 with freight on behalf of a charity outbound.
Il-76TD Now wearing the new Russian registration prefix, RA-76758 of Volgar Dnepr/Heavylift visited again. On 13th May Stansted-Valencia as HLA764 with car components outbound and on 18th December as HLA713 Ulyanovsk-Stansted with an engine for a stranded An-124 that should have flown on Operation Christmas Child.
1994 RA-76758 visited for the third consecutive year, this time routing Valencia-Stansted with Ford's freight inbound on 2nd July, calling HLA667 of Volgar Dnepr/Heavylift.
1995 UR-78755 of Khors Air in conjunction with Air Foyle called three times during the year. 21st January as UPA587F/2487 Luton-Dublin with newspapers. 23rd February as UPA2611/2 Valencia-Shannon with car components inbound. On 12th June UPA2715/715F f&t Luton with car components inbound.
RA-76489 of North East Cargo as MGD7095 routed Madrid-Manston on 14th March with car components inbound.
IL-76TD RA-76401 operating for Heavylift made of the first of what would become a number of visits over the next couple of years on 6th July routing Dusseldorf-Cardiff as HLA810/1 with car components inbound.
1996 The best year for seeing the IL-76 at Liverpool, with around half of the total number of visits in just one year - with December being quite the busiest of months. Firstly, early in the year, Heavylift used IL-76TD RA-76401 through Liverpool in January and February due to night runway work closure diversion from Manchester. Routed Amsterdam-Dublin 6 times and Dublin-Amsterdam 7 times over a 10 day period on flight HLA400/401. At the time this service was usually operated by a Short Belfast, for which the IL-76 was subbing.
Inversia's YL-LAL visited four times using the call-sign of North East Air Cargo (MGD). On 21st November routed Ostend-Valencia and on 27th November Cologne-Dusseldorf with car components. A week later it was back again on 2nd December f&t Zaragosa and the next day , the 3rd, Zaragosa-Geneva (for the Geneva positioning flight on 4th used Inversia flight number INV201). Both flights are recorded as TNT freight. The rush of flights in the first week of December being due to a lorry drivers dispute in France.
North East Air Cargo brought in their own IL-76TD RA-76472 three times in a few days. 1st December Paris CdG-Bilbao, on 4th f&t Zaragosa (dep 5th) and on the 5th Zaragosa-Manston. The visit on the 1st is simply noted as 'freight', the other two as being on behalf of TNT.
Final IL-76MD to appear in 1996 was UR-78755 of Khors Air with 5 flights between Liverpool and Dublin on 13th (one), 14th (two) and 15th (two). Confusingly the early flights in the sequence used UPA (Air Foyle) flight numbers, the later few HLA (Heavylift) flight numbers!
1997 In comparision 1997 was quite normal with just two visits by Inversia, with YL-LAJ on 16th February, Zaragosa-Manston and YL-LAL on 7th November with the same routing. My notes simply state freight inbound.
Airstan Il-76TD RA-76842 seen departing on the 16th April 1998
1998 An increase in IL-76 movements and variety with three different aircraft on a total of seven visits. Inversia's YL-LAK called on 7th January f&t Vienna and again the next day Leige-Manston. The other Inversia flight involved YL-LAL on 25th August also Leige-Manston. All simply recorded as 'freight'.
The other IL-76TD to visit was RA-76842 of Airstan, but operated on all visits under Heavylift (HLA) flight authority. 16th April Luton-Luxembourg, 24th October Luxembourg-Stansted, 29th October Ostend-Turin and finally 17th December Luxembourg-Dublin. Again my notes simply state the obvious 'freight' without any detail.
With no visits by IL-76s during 1999, move on quickly to the final year of visits by the type to Liverpool.
2000 Heavylift's RA-76842 routed f&t Luxembourg on Wednesday 12th January, arriving at 2127, departing next day at 1308 as HLA544. Presumably a car parts charter, but I have no contemorary notes on what it was carrying.
The route taken by RA-76758 of Volgar-Dnepr on 26th September is quite interesting, calling VDA8770 it arrived from Amilcar Cabral on Sal Island, Cape Verde landing at 1715; to Jyvaskyla in Finland the next day at 1211. No record of wether it dropped freight, collected freight, or was simply in transit for fuel and crew rest. While probably not the last ever visit of type, this visit was the last - for now at least!
This amounts to just 11 different registrations on 10 aircraft, with 8 different owners/operators, on probably 47 visits by the type.
To summarise the registrations and operators:
LZ-INK
RA-76401, RA-76472, RA-76489, RA-76522, CCCP-/RA-76758 & RA-76842 (Note: RA-76522 later visited as YL-LAK)
UR-78755
YL-LAJ, YL-LAK & YL-LAL.
Operators were Air Foyle, Airstan, Heavylift Cargo, Inversia, Khors Air, Metro Cargo, North East Air Cargo and Volgar-Dnepr.