??? - Туполев Ту-154М

This Tupolev Tu-154M has a long and interesting story behind it. Its life began in September of 1986, as YU-PRK, one of the six Tupolev's delivered to Avioinvest, a newly started airline owned by Energoinvest, a Yugoslav engineering concern, which already had a history with aircraft operations, operating a fleet of Cessna Citation's and other smaller aircraft which were loaned to the Sarajevo Air Club. The airline was started because Energoinvest was partially paid with them for completing a job in the Soviet Union.

Avioinvest had no fixed routes, but their aircraft mostly flew charter flights and were used to transport Energoinvest's workers and equipment between the plentiful sites they were working on around the world. With the Yugoslav Wars starting, the airline lost four of its six Tu-154M's, two were destroyed and two were captured. The remaining two aircraft were transferred to the government of the newly established country of Bosnia and Herzegovina where they were shortly used for diplomatic trips before being mothballed in early 1993. The two aircraft were soon to return, with a brand new colour scheme and were seen in multiple European cities, even reaching Dayton, OH for the final peace negotiations. Once the war was over, the two aircraft were transferred to Aerobosna because they were too expensive to be kept in service and the government chose to retrofit one of Energoinvest's Citation II's for its needs. They were used up to 1998 by Aerobosna, before being auctioned off for a grand total of ten million USD to an unknown buyer from Cyprus.

The interesting part of its history starts here. The aircraft was spotted for the first time since it left Aerobosna's fleet in Libya, April 2011, with a completely different livery scheme. Before that it was thought that it was scrapped soon after it was bought by the shell company, however, it turned out that it was still flying. By that point the aircraft was flying unregistered with it being removed from the Bosnian aircraft register some time in early 1999. By this point in time, Bosnia even switched to using a new prefix - E7. Soon many questions arose about the aircraft, with many eye witnesses saying that they had seen the aircraft in many areas that were in conflict, such as the DR Congo, South Sudan and etc. Conspiracy theories arose that the aircraft was used for smuggling weapons to these areas, with the theory eventually being proven when the aircraft was searched by a coordinated team of several of the worlds special services in 2014. The cargo bay and passenger area were filled with small arms, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns and many types of ammo. The aircraft has ever since been parked at Lagos International Airport, and has probably been left to rot. The question where the other Tu-154M, T9-BOT, still remains unanswered. The shell company which is the legal owner of these aircraft had folded in 2004, which left zero ways to trace the actual operator of these aircraft.

The scheme painted on T9-BOS was meant to give off the wrong impression of it being an aircraft owned by the Red Cross or some other medical airline. It is rumored that it was accompanied by at least 3 more Tu-154M's, all of which were painted in a similar scheme.

big thank to Flyhighaviator for the gear and backdrop