Court in Sri Lanka lifts ban on Aeroflot's Airbus A330 departure - media

MOSCOW. June 6 (Interfax) - A court in Sri Lanka has lifted the ban on the departure of Aeroflot's Airbus A330 from Colombo on Monday, the Sri Lankan news portal News First said.

The order was suspended after the Colombo Commercial High Court considered a motion filed by the Attorney General, the portal said.

As reported earlier, an Aeroflot Airbus A330 arrived in Colombo in the morning of June 2 to perform a return flight to Moscow. The flight was delayed until Friday morning but did not happen then either. On June 2, the Commercial High Court of the Western Province issued an enjoining order on the Aeroflot flight restraining it from taking off from Bandaranaike International Airport at least until June 16. The case relates to a commercial dispute between the Plaintiff, Celestial Aviation Trading affiliated to the GECAS lessor.

Later on, Aeroflot said it was suspending commercial flights to Colombo "due to the uncertainty about unimpeded airline flights to Sri Lanka." Ticket sales for flights to Colombo were also suspended.

The Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) said it was working to resolve the Aeroflot A330 situation. The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed a protest to the ambassador of Sri Lanka in Moscow on Friday.

As the Russian military operation in Ukraine began, Western nations compelled local lessors to take leased planes back from Russia. Numerous detentions of planes operated by Russian airlines followed abroad. Rosaviatsiya recommended that planes leased from foreign companies and not registered in Russia suspend international flights.

According to the Airfleets portal, the detained A330 plane of Aeroflot was registered in Russia in late April, and was registered in Bermuda before that.