This Airbus A320-200, registered under the name YL-LCU, has been with 6 different airlines in its 19-year history. Built at Airbus’ Airbus A320 assembly unit in Toulouse (France), it was first delivered to German leisure airline LTU International in April 2002 under the registration number D-ALTG. It was 1 of 12 Airbus A320s that operated for LTU International and the 7th to be delivered to the airline. After LTU’s integration into Air Berlin, it was 1 of 10 Airbus A320s to be transferred to Air Berlin. In March 2007, Air Berlin took over LTU International and a year later, Air Berlin announced that the LTU International trademark would no longer be used, making YL-LCU officially part of Air Berlin’s fleet as of January 2008. The aircraft’s registration number did not change after its integration in Air Berlin’s fleet. In April 2009, the aircraft was sent to Swiss, where it was named ‘Davos’ (a small Swiss city in the Eastern-Swiss canton of Graubunden, where Italian and German is spoken) and re-registered HB-IJX. In 2012 it was re-named after the city of Bulle in the canton of Fribourg. Leaving the Western-European circle in May 2017, it was moved to Latvian ACMI and charter airline SmartLynx, where it recieved its current registration number, YL-LCU. SmartLynx has an Estonian subsidiary, SmartLynx Estonia, which is why some of its aircraft posses the registration number prefix ES- instead of YL-. In 2018, it was leased for a 6 month period to EasyJet (January to June), leased back to SmartLynx and re-leased to Condor for a 5 month period (June to October). As of October 2018, it has not been re-leased and is part of the SmartLynx fleet. As we can see, most jet aircraft spend a certain amount of time with lessors and ACMI specialists and not with private airlines. This is because there isn’t always a need for these aircraft, but they have to be stored and kept up for future use. 20th of December 2020.
Aeronews24 