American Airlines illegally trafficked the type of munitions used against Iran through Irish territory this month for the US Air Force.
Four passenger flights from London to Dallas went through Irish sovereign airspace carrying two 96-kilogramme SUU-96 weapons pylons and three 54-kilogram internal weapons bay adapters.
These critical parts are used to launch missiles from the Lockheed Martin F-35 – used by both the US and Israel to strike Iran since 28 February this year.
The Department of Transport confirmed to The Ditch the airline didn’t have clearance to fly through Irish airspace, on these Heathrow-Fort Worth flights from 3 to 7 March, with these munitions.
“No exemptions permitting the carriage of munitions of war on civil aircraft were granted to American Airlines for flights on the dates in question,” said a spokesperson.
The carriage of munitions of war through Irish sovereign airspace without an exemption from the transport minister is an indictable criminal offence under Irish air navigation law.
Two of the parts were labelled in shipment records obtained by The Ditch as HS 930599 and HS 930591 – international customs codes used to denote military weapons.
They were sent from the United States Air Force base at RAF Lakenheath in England to a US Defense Logistics Agency depot in California.
More than 1,200 Iranian people, including 175 children in a US strike on a school, have been killed since the US and Israel launched an illegal war on Tehran last month.
American Airlines declined to comment.
