Dark rain clouds approaching from the northwest, but "Lugano" is still lit by the nice autumn sunshine. On 24 May 1991 the crew of this aircraft was unable to find the runway of Bakhtaran, Iran because of bad weather. They ran out of fuel and had to make a forced landing in the Iranian desert. This IL-76, not even two years old at that time, was written off. Metro Cargo ceased operations the following month, on 20 Jun 1991.

Seen making an early morning departure from Waddington for the long flight back to India following the exercise

Back in these days the two Syrian Air Ilyushin 76's were still IL-76M's, but they were later converted to IL-76T (additional APU and several internal differences).