Wings of Lebanon suspends operations, returns 737-700

WOL – Wings of Lebanon (W7, Beirut) suspended all operations effective August 26, 2020, “due to the prevailing economic situation in Lebanon and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic”. The Lebanese charter specialist said in a statement that its parent, tour operator Nakhal Travel, will continue to “provide services to its customers” while the airline goes ahead with refunds. The airline’s only aircraft, B737-700 T7-WLA (msn 35277), operated its last revenue service from Adana to Beirut on August 26, 2020. It was subsequently ferried to Toulouse Francazal the day later, Flightradar24 ADS-B data shows. The 12.3-year-old twinjet is owned by Macquarie AirFinance, the ch-aviation fleets ownership module shows. WOL focussed on plying leisure charters on behalf of its owners, mostly to Egypt and Turkey, supplementing its in-house fleet with A320-200s and A321-200s wet-leaesed from Nile Air (NP, Cairo Int’l) on a regular basis. It also operated scheduled flights. While Lebanon has largely reopened its borders with travellers from abroad allowed to enter albeit with a negative PCR test, the country has been struggling in recent months. On top of longrunning economic, financial, political, and health crises, Beirut suffered the catastrophic explosion of a port warehouse on August 4, which all but levelled large swathes of the city and caused over USD10 billion in damage.